Switch to the mobile version of this page.

The Measure

Archives | RSS | Tips | Twitter

« The NYPD, Bloomberg's "My Own Army,… | City Moves to Slow Department of Tr… »

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Music Folk Prodigy Laura Marling Says She Wants To Make a Punk Album

Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 2:31 PM

It's simple: Laura Marling makes me want to give up. She's ridiculously young for a person with three full length albums, and beautiful, heart-rending, sophisticated ones at that. This is a person who somehow survived dating the lead singer of indie teenage girl catnip band, Noah and the Whale, at 16 years old, only to come out of it more fully-formed than ever, ready to show the world she was a better musician than the rest of them anyway. Even Mike Conklin thinks she's great, and in an interview published today, the 21-year-old now tells the Guardian that she'd like to go for something new and electric, maybe punk.

Bless her heart. Marling, who's one of the few female songwriters I would even mention in the same sentence as Joni Mitchell (the influence is pretty transparent), has relied on the delicacy of the acoustic guitar and her low, subtle vocals to stunning effect, but she's more than ready for an aggressive sound. "My first love was punk, and my current love is punk, so maybe there's a punk album coming, though I probably wouldn't do it under my name," she told the British publication.

Still, that probably wasn't even the best part of the interview. Fielded the "OMG, ur so young!" question, here's how Marling responded:

Everyone remarks on your age and how your music feels like it's been written by someone much older. Do you feel 21?

I feel increasingly like age is very irrelevant. Quite often, cynicism is confused with wisdom, and my scorn is confused with a knowing, which I don't have.

In the same interview, Marling also casually mentioned she reads Steinbeck and Philip Roth. Music crush? Oh yes. Now here, watch this, the title track off of Marling's latest album, A Creature I Don't Know.