Every week, a different FADER editor compiles a playlist to highlight a new release and give you a guide to that artist’s web of influences and peers. These Staff Selects live in our Spotify app, alongside GEN Fs from our archives and playlists for each issue. This week, it’s Duncan Cooper on Laura Marling.
The British singer/songwriter Laura Marling's fourth album, Once I Was an Eagle, came out two weeks ago, and ever since I've been listening to it basically exclusively on my trips to and from work. I play SpellTower on my phone while I do—if you have an iPhone, check out my high score on mobile puzzle mode, because I'm really proud of it. But so it's a fantastic album—everything on the record is Marling's first take, recorded in a single day, and every time you hit play it's like time traveling into her exact headspace. Many songs flow right into each other, and the album's characters and riffs reappear and cycle back, making it not just a great and surreal album to put down then pick up again, but well suited for riding trains where some vague strangers show up Monday morning then Wednesday night, and so on. Someday I'll grow tired of nothing but Laura Marling, so I've prepped this playlist of similarly strong-willed, boldly confessional, folk-rocky artists to keep me company then.
