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Arlo Parks - My Soft Machine

Tabitha Smith

Life has changed since the release of Arlo Parks’ debut album Collapsed In Sunbeams. The young artist has quickly become an indie pop icon over the last few years and has moved to LA to make her mark worldwide. My Soft Machine is subsequently a more mature album, grieving the loss of the innocence of the first, while maintaining the deeply intimate insight into her life that her music brings. If Parks’ debut was ‘making rainbows’ from her trauma, then the sky has clouded over once again to create a more melancholic reflection on life’s ordeals, as Tabitha Smith explores.



Parks detailed on the Off Menu Podcast a few days before the release of the album that she has been a lot more involved with the production-side of the album this time around. This just adds another layer to how personally curated Parks’ work is, with the album being bookended by Bruiseless and Ghost, two of four total tracks produced by the singer. The lyrics in Bruiseless read like a short poem, as much of Parks’ works do, but their aching need to protect and be protected from the process of growing up strikes deep. The words ‘I just wish that my eyes were still wide’ close the song, allowing for this album to explore experiences that run deep in the being, rather than bouncing off the surface as they did in youth. This album addressing healing your inner child, however painfully reflective, as Parks ensures us that we owe it to ourselves. This progresses perfectly into my particular favourite on the album, Impurities. For me, Parks’ music is all about the tiny details of life, almost invisible to the naked eye, that are fixated on to brighten and embrace the vastity of human existence. Parks reduces us down to the fibres of our beings, to an essence that is tainted by experience, embracing not scars but ‘impurities’ that mark the concoction of elements that defines us.


It is very easy to get swept up in the stunning landscapes painted by Parks’ lyricism, but My Soft Machine aims to draw on new sounds that reach beyond Parks’ previous works. Devotion sticks out to the listener, with its energetic riffs that carry a momentum that somehow still maintains the soft undertones of Parks’ discography. Inspired by the 90s rock she used to listen to as a child, there’s a feeling of angst that builds and explodes after the second chorus, something that provides great variety to the album without feeling too out of place. Dog Rose employs amplified guitar riffs too, crying out behind Parks’ confessional lyrics. ‘My awkward devotion to making you laugh’ is a line that really stands out, as I think ‘devotion’ greatly encapsulates Parks’ attitude towards the subjects of all of her songs. Another new feature in Parks’ work shown in Devotion is a spoken-word outro, something that I’ve noticed punctuating a lot of her songs in their middle eights, from the album’s first single Weightless, even going back to Portra 400 from her previous album. Puppy plays on this, as normally the lack of production on Parks’ spoken vocal is what exemplifies these parts of the songs, but here, the spoken outro is more robotic. The song as a whole has a more electronic feel, with bleeping and flickering over gentle drum machine beats being something that producing duo Romil Hemnani and Baird are behind. The pair have produced several iconic tracks between them, most notably songs from BROCKHAMPTON, with Baird coming later to the project, but this subtle influence is vibrant in amongst other tracks on My Soft Machine.


"Parks reduces us down to the fibres of our beings, to an essence that is tainted by experience, embracing not scars but ‘impurities’ that mark the concoction of elements that defines us."

Drawing on the influence of producers on the album, Parks worked a lot with Paul Epworth, producer of her debut album, and he is credited on four tracks of this new project. His collaboration is most pertinent in Purple Phase, where the aforementioned ‘storm’ clouds over to create a darker feel in this part of the album. The song addresses how relationships become strained through struggles with mental health and addiction and, somewhat ironically, the song came about rather naturally according to Parks, who stated that she felt ‘free and connected’ after a long week, and improvised the guitars on the track with Epworth. Parks appears to explore both sides of this deeply personal narrative, both giving and receiving unconditional love in troubled times across the album, with Pegasus detailing her struggles to ‘accept someone being so overwhelmingly kind’. This song is the collab that every soft-indie listener has been waiting for, with Phoebe Bridgers joining Parks on the track for some hauntingly beautiful vocals. The song itself feels like a lullaby, with the layering of Bridgers’ and Parks’ voices over what sounds like a xylophone, reassuring the listener and feeding back into ideas of healing deep within the self. ‘I need love like a body needs sugar’ feels so infantile and yet has enough yearning behind it for the listener to relate both to its vulnerability and also the paradoxical way that Parks can’t accept this love when she is shown it; ‘I’m overwhelmed’.



Overwhelming is a great sentiment for this incredible new album, as Parks seeks change and confronts the past in the same moment. I’m Sorry addresses her move to LA to escape, detailing her trust issues and struggles with allowing people to see her at her lowest. This is Arlo Parks at her most mature, with the song’s lyric ‘I’ve been working incessantly’ perfectly summing up her personal growth that is laid bare in this album. Honest and candid in her vulnerability, Parks is one of the most beautiful lyricists of the current moment, yet My Soft Machine proves that this isn’t all that she has to rely on to create something mystifying for the listener to consume. With her producing credits stacking up, Arlo Parks has built up an exciting momentum within the industry that she is more than capable of maintaining in a fashion that appears as controlled and effortless as ever.


 

Edited by Ali Glen

All photos courtesy of Arlo Parks on Instagram. Video courtesy of Arlo Parks on YouTube.

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