A tender exploration of motherhood, memory, and the cycles of life, woven with quiet intimacy and lyrical depth.

Released in 2020, Laura Marling’s conceptual album Song For Our Daughter turned out to be strangely prophetic – three years later, she gave birth to a daughter after years of ambivalence and uncertainty regarding parenthood. Shaped by, though not limited to, the sudden transition to motherhood, Marling’s eighth album Patterns in Repeat weaves a tender tapestry of lineage and love. It is completely void of percussion, with Marling instead opting for acoustic guitars, piano and strings, yet it doesn’t feel one-dimensional. Beneath its sonic simplicity, there is striking depth to each track as she gently unravels age-old reflections on womanhood, family relations, and the passage of time. 

Marling writes and sings about motherhood with precious intimacy – with its indistinct domestic chatter and tentative guitar strums, opener “Child of Mine” invites listeners into a space of laid-back warmth, while “Lullaby” is a literal lullaby, cocooning us in velvet vocals that drift over a stripped-back acoustic soundscape. Several tracks feature gently swelling strings that feel somewhat restrained, never reaching any particularly grandiose peak as they bloom and fade in their own time. However, this ultimately feels more impactful as Marling’s endearing lyricism speaks for itself to provide moments of quiet poignancy. “Last night in your sleep you started crying / I can’t protect you there, though I keep trying / Sometimes you’ll go places I can’t get to”, she sings to her daughter in “Child of Mine”, while “Patterns” muses on the cyclicality of life and fluidity of family dynamics.

Family ties wind so tightly around the album that Marling’s father also features on the record, having written “Looking Back” almost 50 years ago while imagining the ruminations of old age. Now sung by his daughter, its lyrics are heart-wrenchingly direct: “I’m a prisoner in this jail / Confined to younger faces / My memories, I’m not with them / But off in distant places”. “Your Girl” is equally candid as Marling reflects on a past relationship while offering thoughtful social commentary; singing of “feeling like a pawn inside a pornscape”, her voice is leisurely and meandering but never disengaging, carrying a rich profundity reminiscent of Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez.

Patterns in Repeat gently but firmly extinguishes Marling’s previous concerns that motherhood would quell her creativity – written and recorded at home after her daughter’s birth, it is confronting in its lyrics but profoundly tender in its sound, offering hard-hitting pearls of wisdom swathed in soft acoustics.