Laura Marling - A Creature I Don’t Know

(Virgin)

While some will lap up anything by the Brit winning and twice Mercury-nominated Marling, those with a little remove on the scene might want to consider whether this is the sound of the emperor’s new clothes rustling. Marling’s voice is strong and dextrous, her music blessed with a windblown pastoral air on album stand-outs like ‘My Friends’ and ‘All the Rage’, and a robust country twang to Salinas and particularly ‘Sophia’ (where even the Hampshire girl’s accent has relocated to the Midwest) which will no doubt go down well in yet-to-be-cracked transatlantic territories. Yet the record also rests on wan couplets like ‘Night After Night’s ‘you are my speaker / my innocence keeper’ and too much soupy semi-acoustic timidity. Nice, but not ground-breakingly so.