If there’s a rough-hewn tinge to Laura Marling’s eighth album, then there’s a wildly valid reason for it. It was written shortly after the folk singer-songwriter had her daughter, and was recorded in a home studio with the baby ever present – either in between naps, or with her bobbing around in the bouncy chair while Marling strummed and sang.
It’s a drumless record with an acoustic softness, written quickly and produced roughly which gives an authenticity and low maintenance feel that is welcome in the slickly filtered instaworld we all currently inhabit. Later set to strings by Rob Moose before being produced by Dom Monks, Patterns in Repeat relays vividly the early chapter of motherhood. Marling’s warm, breathy, recitative style suits this intimacy. “Child of Mine” feels like a first cut with chat and laughter, a baby laughing, a dog barking and the scraping of guitar strings as fingers get in place for the opening chords. It’s a tender, simple song about “you and your dad [are] dancing in the kitchen/life is slowing down but it’s still bitchin” that speaks to the sense of existential wonder that strikes in the early stages of motherhood. “Patterns” expands this idea, setting the scene for themes of freedom, meaning the cyclical nature of birth and death, time and memory, inheritance and connection as Marling sings: “As those years go by they'll look upon you kindly like a friend/A pattern in repeat and never ends.”
Marling has always been original and poetic, but her music has at times felt quite private and mysterious. Here there are grown up and gritty love songs – to parents in “Your Girl”, or partners in “No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can”. Despite the absence of grand visions and enigmatic storytelling, “The Shadows” contains elegiac echoes of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat as Marling breathes: “She's leaving, she's leaving/My altar, she's leaving/Where will I go to pray?/I want her, I need her/I long to believe her/Words that she will not say”. “Looking Back” was originally written by her dad almost 50 years ago, a longing little ballad that pulls together family ancestry before “Lullaby” with more hums and baby gurgles and the deep need all mothers have to reassure their little ones that you are “safe in my arms, sleep my angel, you’re safe with me”. The “Patterns in Repeat” of which Marling sings, relay vividly the deep, boundless, timeless chapter of humanity that is motherhood, portrayed here intimately and gracefully with a vulnerable sense of wonder.
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