"All of everything that's written is about the cycle of life, in some ways," offers Laura Marling, philosophically.

The 34-year-old English singer-songwriter is speaking about her newly released eighth LP, Patterns in Repeat.

It marks her first record since 2020. In that time, she's stopped touring, studied a masters in psychoanalysis, and, most notably, had her first child.

The first tune on Marling's new record is called Child of Mine, and the album is a suite of songs dealing with the grandest themes: birth, death, aging, care, family, legacy. In short, the cycle of life.

"These hugely profound experiences are happening all the time," Marling says, in conversation with Anthony Carew on The International Pop Underground.

"It happens to everybody. It might not be the birth of a child, but it certainly might be the death of a parent, or the shift into the adulthood – all of these things that are so common. And you certainly get a new layering of meaning to it when you start having your own children."

Feature image: Tamsin Topolski