FEATURE:
Celebrating a Modern-Day Music Queen…
PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Kurunis
The Brilliant Arlo Parks, and Why My Soft Machine Will Be Another Award-Nominated Album
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I remember when Arlo Parks…
won the Mercury Prize back in 2021. Her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, was released in January of that year. In fact, on 29th, it will be two years since that album came out. It is no wonder it won such a coveted prize. With shortlisted artists including Laura Mvula, Parks triumphed over some seriously amazing talent that night! I will come to an interview with Parks from last year where she discussed the moment her name was read out at the Mercury ceremony. I wanted to celebrate and highlight one of our great artists. The London-born twenty-two-year-old is still early in her career, but I feel she is already a sensational and icon-in-the-making. With lyrics that are personal and yet seem to speak for and to so many people, her music has been taken to heart by so many people. A record both versatile and vulnerable, Collapsed in Sunbeams announced an artist who is going to be on the scene for years to come. I wanted to tie this feature into the fact that her second studio album, My Soft Machine, arrives in May. Here are some more details about the album – and you can also pre-order your copy today:
“Twice Grammy-nominated, Mercury Prize and Brit Award-winning artist Arlo Parks is returning with her second album, My Soft Machine on Transgressive Records. My Soft Machine is a deeply personal body of work; a narration of Parks’ experiences as she navigates her 20’s and the growth intertwined. Explained ever-articulately in her own words below...
“The world/our view of it is peppered by the biggest things we experience - our traumas, upbringing, vulnerabilities almost like visual snow. This record is life through my lens, through my body - the mid 20s anxiety, the substance abuse of friends around me, the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating PTSD and grief and self sabotage and joy, moving through worlds with wonder and sensitivity - what it’s like to be trapped in this particular body. There is a quote from a Joanna Hogg film called the Souvenir, it’s an A24 semi-autobiographical film with Tilda Swinton - it recounts a young film student falling in love with an older, charismatic man as a young film student then being drawn into his addiction - in an early scene he’s explaining why people watch films - “we don’t want to see life as it is played out we want to see life as it is experienced in this soft machine.” So there we have it, the record is called....My Soft Machine.” - Arlo Parks”.
I am going to wrap up in a bit, but there is an interview with THE FACE from last year that I think adds some context. Arlo Parks was among many artists last year who announced they would take a break from touring because of exhaustion. Sam Fender, and Wet Leg were also among those who needed time to concentrate on their mental and physical well-being. Parks, understandably, needed a break after such extensive touring. After a fun yet grueling time on the road, she announced that things had to change. Parks discussed this with THE FACE, but she also mentioned what the Mercury win for Collapsed in Sunbeams means to her:
“So Arlo Parks toured, and toured some more, and did that all over the world. By summer this year she was back home(ish), supporting Billie Eilish and Harry Styles (“uhhhhh im playing a stadium tomorrow…” she tweeted, “the last time i played in Dublin it was in a pub…thank you Mr Harry Styles”). And she was smashing it at Glastonbury – amongst other appearances at the festival’s own glorious, post-pandemic comeback, she and Clairo joined Lorde for the New Zealander’s Pyramid Stage performance of Stoned at the Nail Salon.
Then, on 16th September 2022, one year and one week since we’d published her tour diary and she’d sung the praises of her first ever tour bus, the wheels fell off. “I am broken,” Arlo said in a lengthy post on Twitter and Instagram.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ásgeir Helgi
“I’ve been on the road on and off for the last 18 months,” she wrote, “filling every spare second in between and working myself to the bone. It was exciting and I was eager to grind and show everyone what I was capable of, how grateful I was to be where I am today. The people around me started to get worried but I was anxious to deliver and afraid to disappoint my fans and myself.
“I pushed myself unhealthily, further and harder than I should’ve. I find myself now in a very dark place, exhausted and dangerously low. It’s painful to admit that my mental health has deteriorated to a debilitating place, that I’m not OK, that I’m a human being with limits.
“I don’t take decisions like this lightly but I am broken and I really need to step out, go home and take care of myself.”
Her team (who call her Isa, a tangential nod to her birth name, Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho) cancelled gigs in Boston, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver and Salt Lake City, giving her a week’s respite, with the tour resuming at The Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon on 26th September.
“Touring can be beautiful and restorative as much as it can be spiritually and physically taxing. Conversations with friends about the energy touring saps, and the headspace it can drive you into, has made me feel like something has to change in terms of the pacing of shows, mental health support and general pressure cooker culture around touring.
“My hope for the future is that we, as artists, find balance, that people are protected from burnout, that health is put first before all else. I think a gentler, more empathetic approach to artists and their limits would re-infuse touring with the joy it so naturally contains.”
You inspire intense devotion from the fans because of your lyrics – there’s a fundamental relatability to what you do. Has that been nourishing for you, seeing how much fans get from what you’ve written about?
Mmm, definitely. That’s honestly been my happiest thing. It’s my favourite thing about doing shows: seeing people, especially young people, their faces light up, and the community-building aspect of music. Getting messages from young kids who I’ve given the courage to start writing poetry. Or they’re young black kids who love the Pixies but they were like: “OK, I didn’t think I was allowed to enjoy this [music]. But I want to make indie-rock music, and I see you, and you inspire me.”
That chain of inspiration is why I do all of this. It truly feels like my purpose is to make music that feels true to me, but then is also a gift that I can pass on to younger people.
Your first album was based on thoughts from your bedroom, at home in West London, and on teenage experiences, school experiences. Now you’ve had, literally and figuratively, a world of experiences. Will that sense of travel and exploration and interaction with fans all around the world feed into the songs you write for the second record?
There’s no way it couldn’t. The context leads into what I write. Especially going to countries and cities that I’ve never been to before, [for example] spending time in Tokyo. When I visit a country, I dig into the subcultures a little bit. That also opens my musical horizons.
And having conversations with fans, spending more time in the States, talking to people within my peer group and making new friends [there] – all those experiences do subconsciously feed into the music that I make.
The Mercury Music Prize win: how meaningful and impactful was that?
I remember doing Christmas carol services at the church where we did the press [for the award] when I was seven. I did some reading that I probably completely butchered because I was nervous. I cycled past that church on the way to school every day for years!
The Mercury Prize especially has always represented and celebrated just how eclectic and profoundly good British music is. That’s why it was always a prize I followed super-religiously. I would check out the longlist and download it and listen to everything.
For that reason, I would say that has been the highlight of my career. Now it’s sat in my parents’ house, and I still walk past it slightly disbelieving that it happened to me”.
There is no doubt that Arlo Parks is a truly phenomenal artist who will release many more albums. I know that she is feeling a bit more reinvigorated and energised than she did last year – following such a long run of live shows. Her latest single, Weightless, is the first real taster of what we can expect from My Soft Machine (which is a great title!). I think it will be quite similar in lyrical tone compared to Collapsed in Sunbeams, but there are signs that there will be an expansion in terms of Parks vocals and compositions. Of course, the album will have a huge amount of love thrown its way! Parks will doubtless tour the album around the world, and there are going to be awards coming her way. I do think that My Soft Machine will get another Mercury nod. I also feel it will be even bigger. Her debut is a remarkable and rich release, but I feel Parks’ second studio album will be a step up in terms of its revelations, insight and visionary scope. I am excited to hear what is to come from the amazing Parks. She has a voice that has this natural warmth, yet it is so deep in terms of its emotional spectrum. The songwriting reflects that. One of the best lyricists in music today, I think that My Soft Machine is going to be a revelation. Go and pre-order a copy. Arlo Parks is a treasure and phenomenal musician who is going to be a legend in the future. I think we should all…
HAIL her brilliance.