Patterns in Repeat – Laura Marling at the Manchester Albert Hall

Before I begin my review, I would like to take a moment to slag off the couple in front of me. I hope their relationship burns in hell. Why are you making out during “Goodbye England (covered in snow)”? This is a seated gig, I cannot move, I am trapped, and you are eating each other’s faces so close to me that I’m basically a part of this. I’m sick of these linen-clad, gap year enthusiasts coming to intimate gigs, getting pissed and being annoying. Don’t bring your drunk boyfriend to see a live performance of a folk album about motherhood. I’ve never been so relieved that someone needed to leave their seat to go to the toilet so often. They weren’t even a hot couple. I would also like to apologise to the man sat next to me who looked concerned when we made eye contact with tears streaming down my face. I really did enjoy the gig, I’m just a highly sensitive person. All is well. Looking back, I probably should not have worn red mascara. Finally, I would like to apologise to the five people who are going to read this article because it’s going to be very self-centred, but you’re just going to have to deal with it.

I tell my parents that I’m going to see Laura marling and they say: “hopefully she plays ‘Crawled out of the sea’, that was always your favourite when you were little”. She didn’t but that’s okay. I was four years old when a teenage Laura Marling released Alas, I cannot Swim (2008) and six when I speak because I can (2010) dropped. I know I loved her music when I was a child because my parents tell me that was what I always wanted to sing and dance to. I think that there was something infectious about the strum of strings and sung melodies that cemented her as my favourite artist.

Now she stands on stage before me, seven months pregnant, the blonde woman with a guitar who I definitely do not have a parasocial relationship with (we just have a very special connection and every song she’s ever written has been just for me). Renowned as an incredible vocalist and talented guitarist, seeing her live, playing a range of songs from across the past 16 years, surrounded by softly glowing lamps, is a surreal experience.

As I grew into my early teens I drifted away from her music, as time tends to pull us away from the things we love in childhood. But at some point, I listened to Marling’s debut album once again and found myself singing along to lyrics that I did not consciously remember. Approaching the age of the girl who wrote these songs, I had the opportunity to rediscover her familiar music with a greater appreciation for the darker lyrics and more complex themes throughout her work. Since then, I have developed a deep admiration of Marling’s profound ability to articulate emotions and tackle complex experiences that are mostly universal to female experience in such a compassionate way that makes her one of the greatest songwriters alive (fact, not opinion).

Sometimes it feels like the stars align and you come across music that feels crucial to you at that specific point in your life and for me, that was Song for our daughter (2020). It came to me when I needed it and quickly became one of my favourite albums. In an episode of Song Exploder (pretty much the only podcast I’ll listen to), also released at this time, Marling speaks so eloquently and thoughtfully that if I could make everyone listen to one interview, it would be this one. I am aware that, as a stubbornly independent individual, I do not tend to respond well to unsolicited advice, but Marling’s music has acted as a reassuring presence to offer wisdom throughout my life and for that I am forever grateful.

For the first part of her set, she stands in the centre of the stage, solitary, with just her guitar and voice, before welcoming a string section to play Patterns in repeat released this October. Written following the birth of her first child, the whole album feels like a lullaby, filled with maternal love and reflections on birth as reiterations of life. As a 21 year old student, (with no idea what her life will look like in two years time), I have never seriously thought about whether that is something I would want – childbirth has always felt like such a distant possibility. But this album is such a joyous illustration of bringing life into the world and presents such a fulfilling relationship, that makes me think that one day I really would like to have this experience.

From writing an album to a hypothetical daughter, to recording an album for her first born daughter and now performing for the last time before giving birth to her second child, the passage of time is a recurrent theme in her work. Often, when I think of how fast things change and how time seems to always accelerate at the most inconvenient times, I am hit with a wave of anxiety and panic, but listening to Marling sing is so reassuring to me that instead of hyperventilating, I just feel at peace with anything in the past. I think because of the connection this music has to my younger self I simply find it grounding and I value this.

After playing the entirety of her latest album, she is once again alone on stage with her guitar for a final few songs and I am sitting in the Manchester Albert Hall, but I am also 7 years old and dancing around our old living room with my parents; I’m scooping my little sister out of the sea when she was small enough to be knocked over by knee high waves; I’m holding back tears on the 33 bus from Didcot to Wallingford; I’m lying next to the river while my gorgeous dog swims during a COVID summer lockdown; I’m a little bit drunk and sobbing under my favourite tree in the castle meadows; I am walking through Woodhouse Moor trying to find my friends in the sea of students that come out in the unexpected sun like worms in the rain. The strings being played in this room have run through my whole life, evolving patterns in repeat, and sitting here feels like a culmination of life experiences soundtracked by this woman standing in front of me.

Written by Cassia Bennett