Laura Marling - Patterns in Repeat

  by Zena Grieg

published: 19 / 12 / 2024

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Review

Hampshire-born, Brit Award-winning singer-songwriter and musician Laura Marling, 34, has brought out a follow-up to her 2020 ‘Song For Our Daughter’. Her new release is a more personal album, informed by her Masters in Psychoanalysis: “it’s really about investigating the poetic nature of the unconscious…an amazing extractive tool for making music.” The album is in her distinctive folk style, the central themes the birth of her daughter, family and memory. Recorded in her North London home studio with the toddler’s contented gurgles forming an occasional backdrop, ‘Patterns In Repeat’ is Marling’s eighth solo album. Produced by Dom Monks, it is a mix of deeply emotional songs, noteworthy for the complete absence of drums, resulting in a quieter, more subdued sound, the record characterised by Marling:”… the drama of the domestic sphere, the frail threads that bind a family together, the good intentions we hold on to for our progeny and the many and various ways they get lost in time. So much complexity in the banal, the caged, the everyday.” Songs to listen out for in this eleven-track collection include: the opening track, the melodic ‘Child Of Mine’ with its soft harmonies and restrained instrumentation; lead single ‘Patterns’, examining how behavioural traits recur almost unconsciously across generations; the poignant ‘Your Girl’, on reconciling oneself with grief, showcasing Marling’s delicate plucking style; country, piano-led ‘No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can”; the sombre, plaintive ‘The Shadows’; Dylanesque ‘Caroline’; a cover of a song written by her father, 'Looking Back’; and the string-laden, jazzy title track with its uplifting lyrics: “I want you to know that I gave it up willingly/Nothing real was lost in the bringing of you to me”.

Track Listing:-

1 Child Of Mine
2 Patterns
3 Your Girl
4 No One's Gonna Love You Like I Can
5 The Shadows
6 Interlude (Time Passages)
7 Caroline
8 Looking Back
9 Lullaby
10 Patterns In Repeat
11 Lullaby (Instrumental)

Band Links:-

https://www.lauramarling.com/
https://www.facebook.com/lauramarling/
https://www.instagram.com/lauramarling
https://x.com/lauramarlinghq?lang=en

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