Patterns in Repeat

Laura Marling

Released on 25/10/2024 by Chrysalis Records
Main artists: Laura Marling
Genre: Alternative & Indie
Distinctions: Pitchfork: Best New Music Uncut: Album of the Month

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English folk singer Laura Marling recorded her wonderful 2020 album Songs for Our Daughter— imagining a whole life from a parent's POV—before she even knew if she wanted to have kids. Patterns in Repeat, her eighth LP, picks up where fiction left off: Marling is now the mother of a toddler and singing songs rooted in reality. "Child of Mine" is raw and tender, but not in a bruised way; "Life is slowing down but it's still bitching," she sings of her new existence. With Buck Meek harmonizing over gilded strings, Marling is content melding her two worlds. (She has spoken of the joy of discovering she could write lyrics and play guitar while her daughter bobbed in a bouncer.) It's as Joni Mitchell-like as ever, though Marling has said that, while her influences were once "Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, now it's more Townes van Zandt and Leonard Cohen." Indeed, there is a Cohen-like playfulness to "Caroline," with Marling's inflection curious and bemused as she sings from the POV of an older man—comparing hearing from an ex to the fuzzy memory of a song from the past: "But the song had somewhat lingered on my mind/ It went la la la la la la la la la la la/ Something something, Caroline." ("I'd like you not to call again/ I like to keep you off my mind," the narrator ends it, refusing to be haunted.) Motherhood seems to have put liberated Marling to be looser with her sometimes mannered delivery. On "Patterns"—with a gorgeous finger-picked guitar melody—she marvels at the circle of life by ending her lines in up-speak; but it's not the sound of a question mark as much as a hopeful and light exclamation point. "No one's ever put it quite that way," she sings on delicate "No One's Gonna Love You Like I Can," turning over the last word like a gem worth examining from all angles. "Patterns in Repeat" highlights that great earthiness of Marling's tone, but things take an unexpected turn on the bridge as she's joined by other voices covered in what sounds like a layer of ice. "The Shadows" uses minor keys to suggest a darker mood; instrumental "Interlude (Time Passages)" casts mellotron and synth to evoke a happy and industrious cartoon tugboat, with cello as the strong ocean waves helping to propel it forward. "Looking Back" is an easy chair of a song about dwelling in the past, rich with Carole King-style balladry; put to different instrumentation, it could almost be an R&B track. It's actually developed from a song written by her father when he was a young man, and Marling, who re-discovered it, was struck by its cyclic inevitability. Near the end of the record, there's a song called "Lullaby"—predictable, but charmed, featuring her daughter's gurgle, sugar-spun strings and lyrics like "Sleep, my angel/ You're safe with me." Going falsetto on some notes, Marling is like a demure Disney princess of old. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

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Patterns in Repeat

Laura Marling

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Child of Mine

00:04:12

Dom Monks, Producer, Mixer, Engineer - Rob Moose, Engineer, Viola, Violin, Strings - Matt Colton, Masterer - Laura Marling, Composer, Producer, Guitar, Piano, Vocals, Backing Vocals, Mellotron, MainArtist - Kobalt Music Publishing LTD, MusicPublisher - Buck Meek, Backing Vocals - Katt Newlon, Cello - Maudie Marling, Backing Vocals

2024 Chrysalis Records Ltd (in partnership with Partisan Records) under exclusive licence from Laura Marling 2024 Chrysalis Records Ltd (in partnership with Partisan Records) under exclusive licence from Laura Marling

Patterns