Laura Marling never misses. Seven of her eight albums score above 80/100 from music critics on AOTY, and all hold above 75/100 in listener ratings. By this simple math, her latest record, Patterns in Repeat, ranks second or third best after 2020’s Song for Our Daughter and 2013’s Once I Was an Eagle, depending on the counting method. Yet, a few challenges arise: first, when faced with such universal acclaim, the temptation to doubt it and write a contrarian review is strong; second, it can be challenging to pinpoint what’s genuinely excellent versus just good in folk music, especially within the rich catalog of a single artist.
Usually, as a music critic, beyond listening to an album dozens of times and assessing how it enriches the genre and impacts the music industry overall, you carefully delve into its lyrics, pondering whether they resonate with the so-called zeitgeist and how they connect to one particular musician’s biography. That often involves in-depth research, including reading dozens of interviews and features and even speaking with relevant people in the industry. Sometimes, you’re almost ready to write an entire biography book on a musician you’ve just investigated. You begin to untangle everything the artist has hidden in their record, and the deeper it’s buried under layers of meanings, references, and tricky riddles, the higher the score it eventually deserves.
It’s obvious that most musicians aren’t philosophers or scientists capable of delivering deep, life-changing insights or shifting your perspective on various topics. Many, especially in the folk genre, mostly sing about basics like love, exes, family, parenthood, loss, and other mundane struggles. At the same time, their popularity depends on how masterfully a musician is capable of doing so. If their lyrics are simple and relatable enough to resonate with the experiences of everyday listeners yet sufficiently sophisticated for critics to proudly wear a musician’s merch tee with their song lines, it’s a bingo moment.
“You and your dad are dancing in the kitchen / Life is slowing down, but it’s still bitchin’,” Laura Marling sings in the opening track, “Child of Mine”, adding, “I got myself a rod, but I could break it / My back is still as strong as I can make it.” Her amazing ability to craft intricate and simple lines can disarm even the most critically-minded listener from the get-go. Hearing how gently and piercingly sweetly she sings about the fear of missing even a single moment of her baby daughter’s growth, it’s easy to shower this album with every possible praise in advance. At some point, it is almost tangible as if she might break into something like Des’ree’s “Life” singing, “Life, oh life, oh life, oh life,” but instead, she coos, “Child of mine / Child of mine,” under an angelic choir.
This sweet and deeply reflective lullaby became the first step in the record’s creation, perfectly setting the overall atmosphere in the vein of Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life, with such moving messages meant for a grown-up child from the future. Echoing this comparison, Marling sings over The Last of Us soundtrack-meets Phoebe Bridgers-like strums, “To have your children, your flock of birds / Your branch among the wood,” in the lead single, “Patterns”, evoking the idea of a “family tree”, as noted by an observant user, LazelleLyrics, in an annotation on Genius. “Pulled for meaning, I arched my back / And then from the black you were born,” she continues, delivering one of the most poetic descriptions of childbirth.
In the Christian Lee Hutson-evoking “Your Girl”, the theme of childbirth seamlessly flows back and forth into reflections on relationships and motherhood, much like scenes in Marc Forster’s Stay. In the same way, this interweaving works in the piano-led, almost Satie/Debussy-esque nano-berceuse, “No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can”. Marling’s oeuvre has always been described as wise or accomplished “beyond her years”, but these multifaceted and nuanced lyrics could only be written by a deeply experienced person—or perhaps by someone with an MA in psychoanalysis, which Marling completed about a month before giving birth. Despite describing it as “completely antiquated, and full of glaring, problematic errors,” she also found it “an amazing extractive tool for making music because it’s really about investigating the poetic nature of the unconscious”.
Speaking of the connection between lyrics and a musician’s life, which we touched upon above, while Laura Marling’s previous record, Song for Our Daughter, was written to an imagined child, work on Patterns in Repeat began after she gave birth to her baby, Maudie, whose presence is evident in some songs. Still, most of these songs can easily be perceived as totally unrelated to motherhood, as in the slightly Billie Eilish-ish and intensely grave Western film-suited ballad “The Shadows”. Could this song be about relationships? Yes. Is the sly and somewhat mocking kicker, “Caroline”, perfect for the evergreen, diaristic breakup ballads category? Also yes. Yet themes of children and growing up/aging remain omnipresent throughout the entire 36-minute run.
One of the record’s pivotal gems is “Looking Back”, an old-school Bob Dylan-flavored song written by Laura Marling’s father, Charlie Marling, in his youth, imagining old age. “Looking back, that’s all I do / Looking back, that’s all I’ll ever do,” she ruminates with astute wisdom beyond her years. This touching family twist was made possible, in part, because when Laura was six, her father taught her to play Neil Young songs on guitar. Together with his work running a recording studio and her mother’s role as a music teacher, this led to Marling’s early music career at 16. These tiny details lend a universal touch to the album, taking it beyond a typical maternal record to a more meaningful reflection on intergenerational legacy and familial love.
Patterns in Repeat is not made for big stadiums or even the usual kind of touring—”I like to be at home,” Marling says—but primarily for personal purposes that magically align with the needs of millions of listeners. This is the perfect match we discussed at the beginning of this text. By openly expressing her most intimate feelings, Laura Marling yet again hits a bingo of critical recognition, listener respect, and personal fulfillment.