Repeated patterns – A study in intimacy – The Irish Times

There is a precise and deliberate poetry in Laura Marling’s new album, born perhaps from a more reflective period spent looking at patterns: of motherhood, generational family dynamics and the passage of time; and where she has been considering what she calls “the enormity of the picture as a whole, the enormity of a precarious, heavenly, fragile and extraordinary life, taking its place in the relatively banal constellation of a family”.

Patterns in Repeat is a study of intimacy. He opens with Child of Mine, which begins with sounds of his young daughter; it’s a song about slowing down, partly conveyed through lovely choral sounds and a lullaby feel. In fact, the album resembles a long lullaby, with Marling’s rock and vocal persuasion.

The patterns reach something equally delicate, with a finger-snapping guitar setting up a Judee Sill scene. Your Girl, with its talking-song quality, takes us to an old-fashioned mode. No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can is charming (“you were saying something weird just to make me feel bad”) but retains a wistfulness (“we got tired of making plans that got out of hand”) where he was lovely the strings anchor her voice, a voice that manages to sound strong and confident and sad and true.

After The Shadows’ fado dominance, Interlude (Time Passages) is a strange and playful surprise, an instrumental that’s like the fragmented sounds of a 1950s fairground caught on tape. Caroline washes us in a seventies haze, a song perhaps about the nature of songwriting. Looking Back (written by Marling’s father more than 50 years ago) contains a sense of retaining grace in the midst of adversity.

The lullaby reminds us that the guitar is a touchstone for Marling, an instrument with which he has a powerful relationship. The lullaby is for his daughter, yes, but it unfolds all of us. It’s a generous gathering where his restrained voice keeps things nuanced. The title track bends into a bluesy tone in Marling’s voice as she sings that “Calabasas was in bloom.” There is an air of disenchantment pierced with a clear realism, with a 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 “repeating patterns,” which, even when we subvert them or we change, we are still. live in relation to

Lullaby (Instrumental), which closes the disc, is filled with the spirit of Ennio Morricone; its tones suggest beauty and ruin, evoking ideas of history, poetry and family, in whatever form it takes. It’s a fitting end to an album that conveys a search for peace amidst the patterns we inherit and evolve from.

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