Once I Was an Eagle by Laura Marling

Once I Was an Eagle, Laura Marling's fourth album, arrived on Virgin on 27 May 2013, and it finds one of the brightest songwriters of Britain's nu folk scene stretching out after A Creature I Don't Know. Ethan Johns produced, and he keeps the frame spare and close, so every twist of melody and every flash of temper in her voice lands with full weight. It's traditional folk bones with a restless, modern mind inside them, the kind of record that rewards sitting still with it from start to finish.

"Master Hunter" went out as the first single. Critics were unanimous in their praise, it earned a Mercury Prize nomination, and it has since been named among the finest singer-songwriter albums of the century so far. Short Movie came next.

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