Put out to pasture on a balcony in Paris

Laura Marling - 'Patterns In Repeat' / 'Lullaby' [instrumental] (Patterns In Repeat - 2024)

I was sitting at a table with my wife this Sunday, a couple of glasses and a jug of water on the table alongside a lit candle. The candlelight at London’s Sessions’ Art Club, a Grade II listed building, was also accompanied by ‘Candleflame’ from Adrianne Lenker’s 2024 album Bright Future¹, fortuitously enough, which was being played on a record player near the wall.

We were there because we were lucky enough to be invited to an album playback of Laura Marling’s soon-to-be-released eighth record, Patterns In Repeat. It is fair to say that I am a fan of her work.

As I left the listening party in London, my thoughts on the record were still formulating. Once, I was sitting in a pub, lo and behold, I could hear Nick Drake's ‘Parasite’ over the speakers. I’d already written in the margin of the lyric book we were given that the record was “delicate, fragile and beautiful” and “sparse, like Pink Moon”. So, hearing a song from that album after and a chunk of Bright Future before had already done so much for me to associate them with Marling’s latest.

For those unaware, back in the ravages of 2020, Marling released the album Song for Our Daughter, which was not a literal title as it was for a fictional daughter. Fast forward to 2024, and Marling is now a mother of a young daughter and has recorded an album which is absolutely as sparse as Nick Drake’s final record and like it has an air that these are almost sketches that could have been taken into the studio and had a full backing band to lean on. However, this drum-less and near-percussion-free record² would not be the record it is, were it not delicate and fragile, like a newborn. The album has moments where a soft string line, added by Rob Moose, invites itself in, makes an unfussy point, and then leaves again. These fade in and out of the title and final track, ‘Patterns In Repeat’. For those who subscribe to

Laura Marling

’s Substack, there is a paid post about the song’s origin.

Patterns In Repeat (song)

For those who don’t, I’ll summarise: while visiting Paris for a family funeral of her partner, she writes a song on a cramped hotel balcony while her baby sleeps inside. Despite the challenging circumstances of new motherhood and inconvenient accommodations, it is a moment of freedom and inspiration.

‘Patterns in Repeat’ then cycles back to the melody of ‘Breathe’ from Once I Was An Eagle - the end of the suite cycle Marling plays live frequently from that record and a knowing nod back to her previous masterwork.

Elsewhere on the record is an instrumental starting side two, which acts as a palette cleanser like ‘Treefingers’ or ‘New Orleans Instrumental #1’. There’s ‘Looking Back’, which her father wrote almost half a century ago and was initially written by her dad. There are some subtle and not-so-subtle³ Leonard Cohen references on ‘The Shadows’ or ‘Caroline’ - the latter also giving me ‘Martha’ by Tom Waits vibes.

The record doesn’t end with the title track; keeping in with the theme, we can match the near-title track⁴, the second track, ‘Patterns’, with the actual title track. At the very end, we are given an instrumental reprise of the anti-penultimate song, ‘Lullaby’, practically an acapella song with so few guitar lines.

I have been thinking of a previous instance of an album closing with an instrumental reprise of the antepenultimate song,

It is a world away⁵ from a new mum writing about her young family and recording a subtle and tender record where less is more, restraint is the watchword, and it feels like you are overhearing something profoundly personal and private.

The record is out this Friday and I’m looking forward to hearing it again.

1. I’m sure I’ll get around to ‘Ruin’, one of the standouts on the album, sooner or later.

2. If you don’t count fingers moving across frets as percussion there are a few rings of a triangle (?) and nothing else on the album.

3. In 2021, Marling played Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’ live several times on that tour.

4. Some other near-title tracks include Oasis ‘Morning Glory, Coldplay's ‘Death and All His Friends,’ and Kanye West’s ‘Dark Fantasy’.

5. or at least half a world away.