I’m on the record as to considering the new Laura Marling album Once I Was An Eagle a flat out masterpiece, maybe the best album in three years. But I was discussing it with a friend who is also a fan and he thought the album was too long. It should have been cut to 40 minutes.
It is a matter of course that double albums would make better single albums. This became an epidemic in hip hop circles during the 1990s, where artists padded out to 70 minutes to fill out CDs. It is hard to think of an hour plus album that wouldn’t be improved with some pruning and so it is with Laura.
Laura has two options, either removed the four song suite that opens the album or find other songs to weed. If you remove those first songs, the album immediately goes from an “A+” to an “A-“. The foundations of the album tottters. It is too powerful, too strong a foundation to build the rest of the album on.
Still, the album feels like a revolving door, it tells the same story twice. The fifth song, “Master Hunter”, while quite popular with fans, I consider weak in context. As far as pre-drop singles go, it follows her brilliant first single “Where Can I Go” and comes close to disappointing. On the album it follows “Breathe” and lets you down with a bang. If you removed it and the following four songs, you’d be at “Where Can I Go”, then remove “Little Bird” and you are looking at a ten song cycle 35 minutes in length.
Talk about streamline. Each song would be better than the one before it for the entire length of the album. Yes, you would lose the Imperial Bedroom sense of a major statement but you would gain one of the greatest albums of all time. You could put it on rpeat for days without skipping a track.
I understand why the concept forced her hand and why her desire to say something final about a vision of love and indifference, but she needed an editor.
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