There’s one pretty good reason why Laura Marling hasn’t played live for a while – as it turned out, her 2020 album Song For Our Daughter, addressed to an imagined child, ended up being rather prophetic.
While that intimate, Mercury and Grammy-nominated record made space for the singer-songwriter to share all of the assurances she felt unable to direct towards herself, this year’s Patterns in Repeat came together as Marling entered motherhood for the first time.
Tender, stripped back, and close in focus, it has less of the grandeur of her 2013 sprawling folk epic Once I Was An Eagle, little sign of the conceptual foundations of Semper Femina, and none of the affected Stateside twang that permeated into Short Movie. Instead, it trades all of this for a thoughtful exploration of lineage, legacy, and the lasting mark we leave on the world by loving the people around us, as best we can.
First, though, Marling opened the first night in this London residency with a string of older songs – performed solo in a misty Hackney Church. She began with the first four tracks from Once I Was An Eagle – segueing from Take the Night Off, all the way through to Breathe without pause – before giving a rare live outing to her debut album’s title track Alas, I Cannot Swim.
“I don’t like playing it because it’s basic,” she joked afterwards. “But I thought it was funny. ‘Cos now, I really do want gold,” she added, referencing the treasure that the song's narrator can see glimmering on an out-of-reach river bank. “So much changes,” she quipped. “Should’ve jumped in”.
After revisiting two songs from Song For Our Daughter – Fortune, and The End of the Affair – she was joined by a string orchestra, Hackney’s Deep Throat Choir, and her long-time collaborator Nick Pini on bass. Together, they brought much of Patterns in Repeat to life on stage for the very first time. While strings feature heavily on the album, they took on a truly magical quality in the church venue; Child of Mine, Your Girl, and the record’s title-track all spiralled upwards, bolstered by humming orchestral flourishes.
Throughout, a vocally flawless Marling brought along moments of dry wit and plenty of self deprecation. “That may have been the biggest imposter syndrome I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” she deadpanned, shortly after performing No One's Gonna Love You Like I Can, while playing grand piano. She also stuck firm to a longstanding Marling live tradition. “I don’t do encores,” she said ahead of penultimate song Once. “So if you do want an encore, this is the last song.”
Fittingly, Marling actually closed with For You – the dedication she wrote for her daughter long before she existed. As much as the folk singer-songwriter excels at writing for characters far outside of her own experience – from the older married man on Caroline who bumps into a long-lost love from the past, to fictional hippies haunting Mount Shasta on Short Movie – the writing is just as compelling when she zooms in on herself.
