Song Of The Day 11/24/2013: Laura Marling - "Master Hunter"

Favorite Songs Of 2013: I keep my Top 10 Albums Of The Year list in a safe deposit box in the Caymans until every December 1, but there's almost always at least one album every year for which it's pointless for me to pretend won't be in the top five. This year there are three albums that have pretty much run away from the pack. You'll know what the other two are soon enough, but one of them is Laura Marling's Once I Was An Eagle. This was the first album I reviewed for the Treble blog back in June. The easy line about Marling is that she sounds a lot like Joni Mitchell, which is true, at least in the way they both approach certain notes on the scale. However, mainly to prove I'd done my homework, I compared Once I Was, Marling's fourth album, to the same numbered album in Joni's catalogue, which was Blue. They're both shattering works for reasons that could not be further apart. While Blue was a backwards power maneuver, in which Joni let down all her guards and revealed her most vulnerable parts so that you knew you would never be able to give her shit again, Marling just dispensed with all except the not-giving-her-shit part. It's the toughest confessional folk album ever made. It stripped the poesy and the efficacy from the acoustic folk ethic and kind of threw down. That's how it starts, anyway. It doesn't necessarily end up there, but that's what grabbed me about it to keep me interested. Hyacinths sprung from the blood of wayward youth, it was just a matter of time before one of 'em asked for a receipt.