New Music: Laura Marling

At this very moment I'm sitting enthralled in front of my Amazon cloud player, absolutely loving the sound of a song by emerging British singer Laura Marling. Turns out Amazon.com has a promotion in which you can download "Sophia," one of the songs from her album A Creature I Don't Know, for FREE during the month of December. I did so, am delighted, and will now press the button to purchase the rest of the album. Hurray for new tunes! I first heard about her on CBS Sunday Morning, one of my favorite news magazine shows. I've loved their features for years - it's been a Sunday morning tradition in my parents' household since I was very young. I still get a warm, pleasant feeling of well-being from the associations of hearing Charles Osgood's opening lines, which I used to hear sleepily from my room along with the sounds of the kitchen as my mom prepared delicious Colombian Sunday favorites like arepas, huevos pericos (eggs scrambled with onion and tomato), or caldo de papas (a delicious broth with potato, egg, cilantro and scallions) - comfort food extraordinaire!

Anyway, back to Laura Marling - she has an amazing sultry, deep voice that totally took me by surprise after seeing a photo of her delicate 21-year-old self. This is where people say she's soulful beyond her years, or an old soul, or something like that - but I like to think that people can really be soulful at any age. Her voice, however, does have a bit of the older woman about it. Let's just say they had me at "sounds like a blend of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen" or something along those lines. I highly recommend at least downloading the free song to see if you're into it.

Speaking of Brits, Marlings and CBS Sunday Morning, a few months ago they did a feature on indie actress/filmmaker Brit Marling (no kidding!) and what looks like a great sci-fi film called Another Earth. It won awards at Sundance, I believe, and I'm very anxious to see it. I missed it in theaters for mommy reasons, but I just put it on my Blockbuster Online queue. More on that when it arrives. Yay!

Update: Now listening to full album. Hear banjos and a subtle air of bluegrass in the mix. Still delighted.