‘Patterns In Repeat’: Laura Marling’s moving ode to the transformation of parenthood
Laura Marling’s work becomes a travelogue of her life when you lay it out. Her debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim, is a messy collection of teenage thoughts. Her second, I Speak Because I Can, is bolstered by the foolish confidence of new adulthood. On and on through her discography, each captures not only Marling as she was then during the creation process but also catalogues her interests and inspirations from philosophy to Greek myths. But on her latest release, Patterns In Repeat, she’s looking back as motherhood becomes the topic at hand, capturing her life now in a state that requires a new kind of reflection.
That’s told of time and time again. The welcoming of a baby seems to put life under a microscope as the ultimate single of the end of a woman’s more carefree days can leave them wondering if they lived there fully enough. In the desire to raise a new human right, it’s impossible to escape the act of combing back through our childhoods and youth, rehearing all the lessons you heard then and wondering whether to replay them to your own child, wondering what was wrong and what was right as the looming pressure of crafting a good person from your baby is overwhelming. Motherhood is a transformation and on Patterns In Repeat, Marling doesn’t ignore that.
It’s a beautiful record that stands directly in the light of that. While each of her albums has reflected a moment in her life, this one feels the most literal, as if she’s refusing to hide her new life behind a wall of metaphors. She told The Guardian that after the birth of her daughter and this total reshaping of her life, she struggled to find “anyone [saying]: I’m so happy that this has changed my life in this way”. There is an unending and obviously necessary discussion about the struggles that women face in the battle to balance their love for their children with their own work and sense of identity. But Marling’s discussion was the opposite as she wanted to celebrate the fact that her identity has changed, and she loves it.
In that way, the album becomes a celebration of parenthood and the beauty of devotion to your child. It crops up time and time again. On the opening track, ‘Child Of Mine’, she sings, “Long nights, fast years so they say / Time won’t ever feel the same / And I don’t want to miss it / No, I don’t want to miss it / And I’m not gonna miss it, child of mine,” laying this thought out immediately that life has changed, and she loves it.
But there is something so special in Marling being so foreright about her decision to put her old life aside for this new one and the broader celebration of the way all parents do that. On ‘Looking Back’, she honours that same shift in her father’s life by singing a song he wrote as a young man. Recognising his old life and his old musical dreams by bringing this song to life is such a beautiful way of paying homage and saying thank you to the man who also allowed his life to be reshaped for her.
Recently, Marling announced that she’ll no longer be touring in the traditional way as she wants to be home and present for the life of her child. While some might see that as a sacrifice, this whole almost is Marling’s response, celebrating that decision as a privilege. She lays it out most literally on the album’s closing and title track, ‘Patterns In Repeat’. In the final words on the album, she speaks directly to her infant child, singing, “I want you to know that I gave it up willingly / Nothing real was lost in the bringing of you to me / I want you to have a piece of my maternal flame / Part of me, eternity, a tolerance for pain.” It is, without a doubt, one of the most stunning and moving articulations of motherhood in a long time.
But what makes it even more special is the instrumental playing behind it. As Marling sings of giving it up willingly for her child, a riff from the 2013 record Once I Was An Eagle comes in, connecting the artist then to the artist now. It’s an especially beautiful choice given that Marling once worried that that old album was her peak, that she’d never better it or that her life would never be better than it was then. So to bring that riff back around as her life opens onto this new and higher plane of happiness, and as she proves that her artistry and creativity are just as, if not more powerful now than they ever were, it’s an incredible moment where she combined her old and current self, introducing both to her baby.
“I felt such huge relief that it hadn’t changed that channel at all; I felt like the cat that got the cream,” she said to The Guardian about the creation of this album, made in her living room while she bounced her baby on her knee, often heard babbling in the background of the recordings as Patterns In Repeat becomes a snapshot of her new life that is beautifully in conversation with her old ones while also bidding them adieu.
