Laura Marling’s last album Patterns In Repeat was the very first album we reviewed on this site, written after she became a mother for the first time. The album marked a shift in tone from an artist who had always dealt in romantic complexity and darkness with a refusal to see love in simple terms to an album that was lighter and more beautiful than anything that had come before it. Laura Sings Raffi takes that newfound lightness on an utterly delightful detour.

Raffi Cavoukian is an Armenian-Canadian singer and songwriter born in 1948 who became the most popular children’s entertainer in the English-speaking world writing songs that have been the soundtrack of childhood for generations of North American families. Laura Marling has now recorded seventeen of his songs and released them as a gift to parents and toddlers everywhere. Most children’s music is absolutely awful, designed to test the patience of every adult in earshot. These songs are exquisitely beautiful, charming, and fun to sing along with. Even if you don’t have children you’ll know at least half of these songs and their melodies, and it’s wonderful hearing Laura Marling in a mode we’ve never seen before, sounding completely happy throughout. The whole record is so charming, and she brings her own instinct for simplicity, beauty and a lovely arrangement with an entirely new willingness to be very silly. The elephant trunk solo in Willoughy Wallaby is wonderful. There’s a range of tones across the seventeen songs with some lullabies and some sing-alongs. All of them are lovely, and the album closes with what is presumably a cameo from Marling’s own daughter giggling and stumbling over words, but nailing the final note. If you have small children then this record could be a lifesaver, and even if you don’t it will send you back to a simpler and warmer time in your life for half an hour.