The Singles Jukebox

London folkie continues to display surprising chops…

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Anthony Easton: “And then she sent for her ghostly father, for she had a thing in conscience which she had never showed before that time in all her life. For she was ever letted by her enemy, the Devil, evermore saying to her while she was in good heal her needed no confession but [to] do penance by herself alone, and all should be forgiven, for God is merciful enough…” (Margery Kempe).
[6]

Martin Skidmore: Modern folk, with those weird intonations you only hear in English folk songs, and some atmospheric backing. It kind of kept me interested despite being not at all my kind of thing, but I don’t care if I never hear it again.
[5]

Iain Mew: The beginning reminds me of “Little Lion Man” by Mumford and Sons, but overall it’s more like the rest of their material than that one success. It’s similarly too much graft and not enough inspiration, a bit too studied and respectful of the lineage it aspires to to really take off. The brief quiet moments between the earnest strumming are nice though.
[5]

John Seroff: The melody bears no small resemblance to David Schwartz’s theme for Deadwood and Marling’s voice is a slightly less twangy, anglicized take on Gillian Welch. These aren’t judgments; they’re signs of quality and my piqued interest. Consider me officially on the lookout for the album.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: On her debut album, Laura Marling’s forte was her unaffected, unadorned directness: the ease and clarity with which she communicated both confusion and certainty, the way in which discomfitingly straightforward lyrics and mythic imagery both seemed to come naturally to her, the unforced acuity of her observations. On “Devil’s Spoke”, Marling shows that her opacity is as compelling. She performs with a newfound authority, pulls you into the gravitational field of her ring chants and mantras, and traverses both geographic and emotional landscapes with a focused urgency. Marling is a rare and formidable talent, and “Devil’s Spoke” makes not just her imminent sophomore album but the rest of her career a tantalising prospect.
[9]

Mordechai Shinefield: I heard Laura Marling at Le Poisson Rouge a few weeks ago where she debuted some of this stuff — tougher, more Americana than the debut which was all kinds of gorgeous, but this is all kinds of revelatory. When the guitar starts pounding and Marling sings, “All of this can be broken,” it’s like the floodgates have burst loose. “Hold your devil by the throat and spin him to the ground.” I don’t know what devils Marling has been dealing with, but they’ve made her tough, and her new sounds simply rocks.
[9]

Ian Mathers: This may not be entirely fair to Marling, but with this kind of deliberate, old timey grandeur to the music and imagery I find myself expecting a more concrete narrative. Absent that, there’s nothing much for all the Drama and Significance the arrangement suggests to attach to or propel. I feel like somewhere between this and that Unthanks song we covered there’s something I’d really love.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: The folk here is a little more dense and convoluted than the sparer songs on her fantastic debut Alas I Cannot Swim, but Marling’s lost none of her predilection for gothic Victorian melodrama. Her voice is waifish and nearly not of this world; she doesn’t need references to rejecting sin to sound unearthly. “Devil’s Spoke” is a maelstrom of grim fatalism, making even should-be sexual lyrics like “Eye to eye, nose to nose/Ripping off each other’s clothes” sound doom-stricken.
[7]