Laura Marling on Nostalgia, the Fear of Death, and Self-Promotion

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.

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Real ones know I'm a big Laura Marling fan, and if you're a longtime reader you're probably aware that she's joining the two-timers club on the newsletter today; I last had her on here back in 2021 alongside Mike Lindsay to talk about their delightfully strange side band LUMP. Laura just released a fantastic new album Patterns in Repeat last week, and we had a great time hopping on a call last month catching up on everything that's gone on in her life in the last three years, as well as much more. Check it out:

A lot's changed for you since we last spoke. Talk to me about becoming a parent for the first time.
It was a massive experience—amazing, incredible, the literal experience of childbirth. And then you're obviously flooded with hormones—you're basically high. For several months, as it turned out, what I realized to my surprise was that there was lots of time to play the guitar, which is actually quite rare in my life—to have whole days where I can play the guitar. That was just good fortune.

I found myself very moved by music after my daughter was born. I've always been very moved by music, but [now it was] to the point where I couldn't listen to music without crying. The importance of music in my life got a lot more acute. So what I wanted to do—and, not consciously, because I don't have that much power over what I really do—was to make music that moved in the way that I was moved after having a child.

Was there any music specifically that struck an emotional chord with you?
This is where I lose people quite often, but it was musicals.

I'm a former theater kid, so that makes sense.
Okay, good. I've got you still. It was particularly the Bernstein West Side Story and The Sound of Music—and I grew up on those. Those are what I think of when I think of musicals. I don't think of things past the late '70s. I'm not talking, like, Wicked or stuff like that—not that there's anything wrong with that. But that era of completely indulgent, emotional, highly orchestrated, incredible love stories...I think West Side Story particularly got me, because there's every tragedy that you can imagine in life occurring. It's a very acute version of that. My only instruction to [string arranger] Rob Moose was to support the emotional qualities of the song, and that's what he did.

I grew up on The Sound of Music pretty heavily and, in my 20s, regarded it as just part of my childhood. Then I saw it in theaters six or seven years ago and found myself so emotionally overwhelmed by it. I guess it's because I'm an adult now and I can understand what's going on in it much more.
That's another aspect of any sort of massive adult change in your life. You understand things in a totally different way—all that music, and also lots of books that I've reread recently. It was like, "I didn't get this at all before."

Your Wikipedia notes that you had a fear of death when you were younger. Has that carried into adulthood, and if so has becoming a parent affected that in any way? I have friends who, since becoming parents, definitely find stuff like horror movies harder to watch as a result.
Yeah, I don't watch horror movies anymore. I have a friend who has an 11-year-old, and she only just started riding a bike again for fear of getting hit by a car. There was an interview with Nick Cave where he was talking about how, while making an album, he always goes through the same cycle of feeling like he's dying, and I totally related to that. When I was making Song for Our Daughter, I started getting targeted ads for funeral services because I was obviously googling anxiety symptoms.

It does feel like that has carried with me. Obviously, the relation to that of having a child is different, but you suddenly feel a tremendous sense of life force where, maybe you weren't aware before that you had a death drive that was driving you. Now, there's no way of escaping the fact that you have to live—though, [the death drive] does happen, and the process of making a record is that something's always erupting, so it feels uncomfortable. It's like anxiety, I guess. It erupts, and it makes you feel like you're dying.

The last record was written to a fictitious daughter you didn't yet have. Tell me about how that creative process was different than writing this one with your child very much in the room with you.
The idea for Song for Our Daughter came from a Maya Angelou book called Letters to My Daughter, where it's a fictional daughter. I found that open-ended-ness to be profound, and an impetus for a reflection on the time of my life that I was becoming less a girl and more a woman, and feeling it reflected in society as I walked through the world. This isn't a criticism—it's just a fact—you start to notice that in the world you're viewed as a woman and very rarely a girl, and I'm very proud of that fact.

But this record is cementing that, now you're a parent, your identity shifts again. My focus was unconsciously related to this little world that you live in as a family, which makes you intensely aware of the little world that you grew up in and what dynamics were at play there—and that extends ever outwards. So where Song for Our Daughter was open-ended and addressed to anybody, this record has more of an inward focus—not an isolating one, but a person thinking about the internal workings and desires of people within a family unit.

When I talked to Julia Holter for the newsletter earlier this year about her experience making music during the newness of motherhood, she found it very difficult. It sounds like you had the opposite experience.
I was lucky for a number of reasons. I did find it easy. Part of that is my literal comfort level. I have a studio at home—easy peasy, lucky me. Also, I got it all done before she was eight months old, and at eight months, the world really turns upside down because they start walking. I didn't realize that I was lucky to have done it before she started walking. because I couldn't do it now. I just wouldn't have the time. I was writing it while she was literally a couple of weeks old and recording it by the time she was six months old.

Also, I think I'm the type of person that does well with a lot. I have to be doing a lot. I don't sit down very easily. To be truthful, I find sitting down too scary, so I sort of work all the time. As soon as she'd gone to bed, I'd work into the night. It just worked for my my personality type, but obviously everyone's experience is totally, wildly different.

Across your records, your sound has become increasingly pared-down. Talk to me about why that may be.
In the last two records, I've taken a lot more control—which obviously sounds like I'm hoovering up that as a compliment, which, I'll take it. [Laughs] When I was young, I was put in with Ethan Johns, and I loved Ethan. I wanted to be in the room with Ethan. But I wouldn't have known how to get to Ethan—it was people who put me with him. Ethan was a great mentor because he's very old-school. He'll only do three take, only play with the band in the room, and never have your guitar taken away from you while you're singing.

The last two records were demoed at home, and for this record what we thought were the demos actually became the album. I got a bit of confidence from Song for Our Daughter in that it's no one else's responsibility to interior decorate the album but mine. It never occurred to me that I could do that myself. The unforeseen consequence of that, is I can only interior decorate to the extent of my ability, so it's kept within my scale of what I can do. When I made an album with Blake Mills—which was extraordinary, he's an extraordinary person—it was intimidating to not feel like I could replicate that myself.

"Looking Back" stood out to me in terms of how it gestures towards nostalgia. I'm always curious to talk to people in our age range about nostalgia, and—I've been watching a lot of Adam Curtis lately, so excuse the tangent here—it's a potent drug in terms of how it's implemented in the world.
Yeah, Adam Curtis leans on that very heavily—he claims that it's being used as a kind of persuasive tool. And I agree, but there's also a lot of it that's a form of emotional terrorism, isn't it? I fall prey to lots of nostalgia bait on algorithms— people telling me about sweets that you used to be able to get in the '90s, that really gets me, and that is so much of songwriting, to me. My dad actually wrote "Looking Back," so it's like a double whammy of emotional manipulation, because I was handed down his musical taste and he taught me the guitar, so I was handed down his style of guitar-playing.

A slightly cute little side story is that one of the songs I listened to a lot when my daughter was born was Buck Meek's "Dream Daughter." I was absolutely convinced I'd heard it for years and years, and then I realized that the album had only come out a year before. It felt like it erupted from the common unconscious—like, I knew this song before it was a song. It's part of the essence of songwriting—you want to emotionally manipulate people with songs.

Last time we spoke, it was kind of in the twilight of the lockdown era. Four years out now, how do you reflect on that time?
I had an unusual experience, because I released an album, so I was busy speaking to the outside world. In a more general sense, one of my sisters was living with me and my partner was home with us all day, so it was a really blissful time where all the stresses of the world—other than the massive central stress—melted away. So I think of it fondly.

I remember reading—somewhat of a controversial book now, quite rightly—a book that came out in the '80s called From Beirut to Jerusalem. It was written by a Wall Street Journal journalist who lived between the two places during the various conflicts. One of the things he found most interesting was the way that micro-communities form in times of war, and how potent those connections become when peacetime returns. They find it very difficult to not have these micro-communities holding them together as they reintegrate into the world. It came to my mind a lot during COVID, because there was a united sense that, in a very small way, was really pleasurable and hard to give up afterwards.

Other than that, it did also show me that you can release albums without leaving your house, which has been extremely beneficial for becoming a parent.

We talked a little bit about touring last time. It seems like you're embracing a pretty limited tour schedule for this run.
I've done a lot of touring, so I feel very happy not to leave the house that much. I've got a real life, my partner works, and we can't really travel that much. I don't like being separated from my daughter, so that wouldn't be a choice. I'm thinking of my life now in 10-year chapters, so I'm thinking that in 10 years time, I'll come back, I'll be nice and older, and I'll do a proper big tour—which I'm very happy to do, as long as I don't lose confidence on the way. That's the only scary thing: If you don't touch it for a while, will it feel very scary to come back?

But we're doing London and New York, and we'll probably do some European residencies in the summer next year. It's just a new way of touring for me—it's still touring, I'm still playing shows, but it's just not as accessible for everyone else. I will miss it, because i do love it, but that's okay.

You also mentioned teaching guitar lessons the last time we talked. Is that something you've still been doing?
That fell by the wayside. I'm doing it on Substack for paid subscribers.

How's the newsletter been going? Speaking from experience, it takes a lot of self-discipline to keep it going.
It's scary. I put a written one out once every two weeks, and I always get to the Wednesday before the Friday that I'm supposed to put it out, and I'm like, "Oh my God, I haven't done it again."

I know that feeling.
And it's probably for the best, to be under that level of pressure to just get it done and not be too self-conscious. And I've really loved it. I've become accustomed to using social media—obviously, everyone else is forced to be, and I understand why—but it doesn't come naturally to me. Writing in that form, that's five minutes worth of reading I really enjoy. That's about all I could do.

When it comes to just hitting "publish" on something, is that a feeling that's come naturally to you? There's an ease to doing so that can be a little intimidating sometimes.
It's come pretty naturally. That's a good question, though, because it made me think that the reason why I feel very comfortable doing it is because I've reached a point in my life where I have good enough instinctual control over my unconscious mind to not let things slip that I didn't want to be there. When I used to write things out for people or publications or whatever, I'd be like, "How did that get in there? What am I really trying to say?" I feel that much less now. It might be just the time of life. It might be just I don't have time to care.

But not having an editor is really insane. I wish I had an editor. It's so embarrassing—so many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. You feel like you've walked out naked.

You've been putting out records for 15 years now. Tell me about what you've experienced in the music industry, and the changes you've witnessed.
In my early years, I was signed to a major label in a terrible deal from which I've never seen any money, and won't ever see any money from in my lifetime. That was obviously quite beneficial, because I got to make the records I wanted to make, but now that I have a daughter and I realize that she'll never have those records either, it's all a bit depressing.

I had a teenage petulance that protected me from being manipulated from outside sources, and I was lucky because I did start so young. But in later years, after I started working with small labels and social media became a thing, I started seeing young artists having a unique way of being seen and understood in this new fourth dimension that, to my complete surprise, I actually found very inspiring and interesting.

I do think there's a lot of downsides to the way that music is released and promoted now, but I also think there's a lot of really interesting sides to it.
It's hard to navigate, and it's a whole new world out there—but, as a consumer, I'm enjoying it. The first person I really enjoyed seeing promote themselves was Father John Misty. When he got a real hold of Instagram, I was like, "That's genius, brilliant." Then, Josh walked away from that, which is kind of fascinating.

I remember the first time I heard somebody say, "What's the story for your album?" That is definitely dead. No one asks me what the fucking story is now, and I'm very glad about that. And that was only five years ago, so that's happened quite quickly.