A Creature I Don’t Know

A Creature I Don't Know is the third album by British singer-songwriter Laura Marling, released on 9 September 2011. The first track from the album to receive radio airplay was "Sophia", on 25 July 2011 on BBC Radio 1. The "When The Bell Tolls" tour of America, Canada and England was announced on 25 July, and took place in September and October 2011 to support the album.
Marling began working on the album during the lull after her I Speak Because I Can 2010 tour. It was a solitary time which she remembered as "a lot of sitting in cafés, newspaper crosswords and scrawling in notebooks before any songs took shape". This gestation period was, according to Marling, essential. "I think I stew over ideas for a long time. And I can get fixated on an idea, it will probably start with something from a book I've found interesting, and then I'll probably think about it and then I'll have conversations with myself about it, and then obviously it seeps into my conscious and a song will be written about it", she told The Guardian. "The songs had been written, or more accurately there was nothing left to say, but I think I waited for a month or so before I did anything with them. Then most of them were demoed sitting here, with a microphone hanging there", she added.
Marling started writing the material alone, as well as working out the vocal arrangements before she played any of the songs to her band and producer. "It was quite an interesting way of doing it, because it allowed me to put my stamp on it before anybody else put their stamp on it. With the first two albums – Charlie (Fink, lead singer of Noah and the Whale) produced Alas I Cannot Swim, and it's as much his album as it is mine, and with I Speak Because I Can, the style of the drumming and the bass playing is very much a representation of the characters who were playing on that album, and Ethan (Johns) stepping in as well. This time I thought: 'Well, I've got the confidence now, and I know what I want it to sound like, so before anybody else gets their grubby mitts on it, why don't I put my stamp on it?'" the singer said.
Marling has been often described as an avid reader, and some of the album's songs bear direct references to works of literature. "Salinas" was inspired by a book about John Steinbeck. "Sophia" (the ancient goddess of wisdom, sometimes seen as God's female complement) was written under the influence of Robertson Davies's philosophical novel The Rebel Angels. The album's other main topics are "love, rage, desire, family, devils, angels, devotion, betrayal and the roles women play".