LAURA MARLING
Patterns In Repeat (Chrysalis)
THEY’LL CALL THIS mellow Marling, quite rightly. You may consider that an invitation or a warning.
It is quiet and measured, acoustic and just lightly enhanced with occasional strings and backing vocals, and Laura Marling’s voice central, calm and intimate. One song is called Lullaby, and it is, repeated a few tracks later as an instrumental that is even more gentle. Another track is called Interlude (Time Passages) and sits mid-album, huffing gently on harmonium as a transition point between an easy afternoon first half and a early evening in second half.
The first “evening song” after this interlude, Caroline, takes its musical cues from early L.Cohen (finger-picked acoustic rolling through; strings presenting just to the side; the melody lightly resting on top), its lyrical cues from mid L.Cohen (a woman named and curiosity sparked; memory touched with regret and a sliver of amusement; and a brutal line delivered with grace), and its understanding from late L.Cohen (a story that seeks to hold the past at arm’s length shows its workings; forgiveness is available; humour is at hand).
Before them all, back in the “afternoon”, No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can and Your Girl consider current and past friendships/lovers/parents with equanimity. An equanimity that doesn’t pretend that hurt was absent or that desire doesn’t bubble now, that death doesn’t leave you empty, but puts them within a more complex picture. They carry warmth and hope and missed moments as she sings with an ease that is far too meaningful to be casual. They hold you with a delicateness that is too comforting to be flimsy.
You’d hardly call Marling’s seven previous albums rocking, but this is gentle-as, even in the solemnity of The Shadow’s crushed-soul narrative told from the perspective of a lover who “knew, of course I knew, that one day she’d tear me apart”.
An explanation for the temper and tempo, for the emotional basis, of this record comes early, in the opening song, Child Of Mine. Having described a regular, in no way consequential, domestic scene (and along the way breezily rhymed kitchen with bitchin, as if daring us to be humourless grumps objecting), Laura Marling addresses her daughter to say “Plus you’re mine, so who would rush right through this, child of mine?”.
Patterns In Repeat is a record for and about the experience. The experience of being a parent, the experience of being vulnerable and connected, responsible and dependent, of being bombarded with emotions. The experience of marshalling those emotions, expressing those emotions, and finding a way to make art from those expressions. And, most of all, taking the time to experience it all.
If all that sounds namby-pamby, a lifestyle column/mummy blog in 36 minutes from a born-again resistor to the idea of domesticity, I can understand. It’s not like that, but I can see why you might think so when the spiky and sceptical Marling whose first albums mocked the romanticising of (among many things) romance, the occasionally confused and restlessly exploring Marling whose next albums adjusted, with varying degrees of success, to uncertainty, and the speculative and curious Marling whose 2020 album, Song For Our Daughter, offered the confidence of the not-yet-a-parent parent, feel like they must have been subsumed within this version.
But for now, having looked at crowds as much as clouds from both sides, this is a Marling happy in this space, finding ways to expand it, and writing some quite lovely songs along the way.
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