There is a precise and deliberate poetry in Laura Marling’s new record, perhaps born of a more reflective period that she has spent looking at patterns: of motherhood, of generational family dynamics and of the passing of time; and where she has been considering what she calls “the enormity of the picture as a whole, the enormity of a precarious life, celestial, fragile and extraordinary, takings its place among the comparatively banal constellation of a family”.
Patterns in Repeat is a study in intimacy. It opens with Child of Mine, which begins with sounds from her infant daughter; it is a song about slowing down, partly conveyed through lovely choral sounds and a sense of lullaby. In fact, the album resembles one long lullaby, with Marling’s vocal rocking and coaxing.
Patterns reaches to something equally delicate, with finger-picking guitar setting a Judee Sill scene. Your Girl, with its speak-song quality, brings us into an old-fashioned mode. The country-inflected No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can is charming (“you were saying something strange just to make me misbehave”) yet retains a wistfulness (“we got tired of making plans that kept slipping through our hands”) where lovely strings anchor her voice, a voice that manages to sound strong and sure and sad and true.
After the fado sway of The Shadows, Interlude (Time Passages) is a strange, playful surprise, an instrumental piece that is like the fragmented sounds of a 1950s fairground caught on tape. Caroline washes us in a 1970s haze, a song perhaps about the nature of songwriting itself. Looking Back (written by Marling’s father more than 50 years ago) contains a sense of retaining grace amid adversity.
Lullaby reminds us that the guitar is such a touchstone for Marling, an instrument with which she has a powerful relationship. The lullaby is for her daughter, yes, but folds out to us all. It is a generous gathering-up in which her restrained vocal keeps things nuanced. The title track folds in a bluesy tone to Marling’s voice as she sings that “Calabasas was in bloom”. There is an air of disenchantment shot through with a clear-eyed realism, with guitar that lifts us to a kind of optimism. Ideas about personal freedom and domestic duty abound – but it also reflects the truth that life is always a balancing act, and about Marling’s own relationship with those “patterns in repeat”, which, even when we do subvert or shift them, we are still living in relation to.
Lullaby (Instrumental), which closes the record, is filled with the spirit of Ennio Morricone; its tones suggest beauty and ruins, conjuring up ideas of history, poetry and family, whatever shape that takes. It is a fitting end to an album that conveys a seeking of peace amid the patterns we inherit and evolve.
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