In the very first seconds of Laura Marling’s upcoming album, we hear the rustle of distant footsteps. Then comes Marling’s own voice, chatting to someone in her studio, before a folksy strum of acoustic guitar announces the beginning of the track. There’s the giggle of an infant, followed by Marling’s own laughter, as she launches into “Child of Mine,” a devastatingly beautiful portrait of the very specific experience of becoming a parent during the pandemic that, in Marling’s hands, is deftly transformed into a universal tale of the tumultuous bond between parent and child.
(Everyone in the world can relate to ) It’s a neat introduction to Marling’s new record, which charts the emotional topography of becoming a mother—from the highs of postpartum euphoria, to the gradual dawning of how drastically her life had changed, to the deeper philosophical questions it prompted around her own childhood, and balancing her newfound double duties as a mother and an artist. The record was made almost entirely at her home studio in east London, with Marling’s baby daughter bouncing on her knee or crawling at her feet. “You can hear this whole other incidental story happening behind, and the mistakes are left in, but that’s all stuff I like when recording anyway,” she says, breezily.
“I’ve never done more than three or four takes of one thing, because I think you then start performing in a different way. It’s all part of my preference as an artist—to not.