There has been a bit of a delay to
the CD Odyssey while Sheila and I celebrated our 17th wedding
anniversary in Vancouver. I didn’t make my usual musical purchases, but I did
pretty well in the clothes department.
The best on that front was a
vintage tour shirt from the 1980 Blue Oyster Cult/Black Sabbath tour (famously
known as “The Black and Blue Tour”). I tried to play it cool with the sales
clerk to talk her down from the $80 it was marked at, but she advised her
owners insisted the tour shirt prices were non-negotiable. Frustrating as the
news was, I was impressed that the owners clearly knew what they were doing. I sighed, admitted defeat and paid the $80.
Disc 605 is….Once I Was an Eagle
Artist: Laura
Marling
Year of Release: 2013
What’s up with the Cover? Laura strikes an
artistic pose. This cover reminds me of those stark modern dance routines where
every dramatic movement represents some massively important concept, but the
dance is so sparse and the concepts so obtuse you can’t tell what is going on.
I hate those routines.
How I Came To Know It: I discovered Laura Marling during
some trip down the Youtube rabbit hole. I can’t remember how she came up, but
once I started listening to her I got very intrigued. I told my wife I’d love
to get a couple of her albums for my birthday and she obliged.
How It Stacks Up: I have three of Laura Marling’s albums (I’m missing
2010’s “I Speak Because I Can”). Of the
three I have, “Once I Was An Eagle” is easily the worst. Sorry, Laura.
Rating: 2 stars
“Once I Was An Eagle” is an album that
sounds exactly like the cover suggests it will: like a stark modern dance
routine that strips itself down so far for the sake of art that it loses any emotional
grounding. Laura’s pose says it all as she reaches with all her might…for
nothing.
Before I go any further or say any
more unkind things, I’d like to point out that my other two Laura Marling
albums (“Alas I Cannot Swim” and “A Creature I Don’t Know”) are both very good
and welcome additions to my music collection. In my efforts to get the taste of
“Once I Was An Eagle” out my head I also listened to the album I am missing – “I
Speak Because I Can” – and I really like that one as well.
So what goes wrong on “Once I Was
An Eagle”? It isn’t that the record is starkly recorded, since lots of good
records have stark recording; look no farther than early Leonard Cohen for
proof of this.
The first problem is the delivery.
Marling has a beautiful voice, both sweet and vulnerable with a natural gift
for good phrasing. The songs where she lets that voice loose are the best on
the album, including the faerie fable, “Undine”
and the melodic Dylan-esque “Where Can I
Go?” (Marling has an obvious love for Dylan, at one point even inserting “it ain’t me babe” directly into one of
her songs).
Unfortunately, the majority of the
time she deliberately uses a style that is half singing and half talking that
works a lot better for Dylan than for her. The talking sections make the backing
instruments seem flat and plodding. “Devil’s
Resting Place” survives the ‘talky’ treatment by being up tempo with a clever
and building arrangement and “Pray For Me”
gets by on a beautiful chorus, but these are exceptions to the rule.
For the most part the talking
makes it feel like you’re trapped on a long bus ride with some damaged person
who is whispering to you about how messed up their life is. Or put another way,
if these songs needed a bit more wardrobe, but Marling makes the decision to
dance them in the nude instead.
It feels a lot of the time on “Once
I Was An Eagle” that Marling is trying to channel Leonard Cohen, but if you’re
going to sing in the monotone style of Leonard Cohen, you better have poetry as
beautiful as Cohen’s to make up for it. Overall, the lyrics here are honest
enough, but often self-consciously so. Sadly it sounds a lot more like Jim
Morrison than Leonard Cohen.
The record is 16 tracks and 63
minutes long, which is excessive on both counts. This gives it room to include
both a rambling five song opening act, and a pointless instrumental,
appropriately called “Interlude” that
is gloomy and meandering right where the record needs an infusion of energy.
“Once I Was An Eagle” has some
great potential, and some solid songs that stand up well, but they are drowned
in a lot of meandering indulgences. Simply cutting the first six songs and “Interlude” would make all the difference
in the world, and probably elevate it by a whole star.
Worst of all, this album gave me a
different perspective on her earlier work that made those albums harder to
enjoy. I really like my other Laura Marling albums, and for this reason alone I
was planning to sell this one after this review. However, listening to it again
while I wrote this, I had to admit that while outnumbered, the good songs are
still good. Marling remains a strong young talent that can be forgiven for
doing what artists should do; reaching to grow her art in new directions.
I’ll probably rarely put on this
entire album, but I can see myself cherry-picking my favourite songs from time
to time. I’ll therefore give it a reprieve…for now.
Best tracks: Undine, Devil’s Resting Place, Where
Can I Go?, Once, Pray For Me
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