Arlo Parks has become one of the most enlightening singer-songwriters and poets of our time.
Like the most affecting of songwriters, Parks penetrates a deeper place within the listener’s soul. Across her Mercury Prize-winning debut album, Collapsed In Sunbeams (2021), and the 2023 release of her impressive sophomore album, My Soft Machine, Parks’ poetic and honest observations on love, vulnerability, trauma and mental health have impacted fans across the globe. Ultimately, it is within the potential of music and art’s healing capacity that she finds spiritual freedom.
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“I think there’s something about experiencing art – whether that be music or film or a book – that verbalises very complicated feelings that you thought you were completely alone in or that you didn’t really have the words to explain or to shape,” says a reflective Parks, when we meet the day after her inspired performance at the Forum. “I think, for me, it’s the soothing property of music – the way that it inspires me, the way that it makes me feel understood or less alone in pain. In a live space, it’s the community that it builds and that safe space, especially when it comes to queer people and people of colour. The things that are difficult to talk about in conversation always flow more easily when it’s in song for some reason. It’s also that sense of turning the knotted, difficult and impenetrable into something that brings joy and understanding to others. I think that alchemy of it makes it easy to do, a little easier than if it was just simply joy.”
In her exquisitely unique vocals and honest, observational songwriting, the influence of Thom Yorke, Elliott Smith, Joni Mitchell and Frank Ocean is palpably felt. Parks’ poetic lyricism has seen her described as a voice for the new generation. The significance of political songs, such as Bob Dylan’s Masters of War (1963) and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (1964) or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On (1971) and Radiohead’s Idioteque (2000) continue to resonate today.
Does she feel pressure to address complex social and political issues?
“I think it should be natural,” Parks muses. “I think it should be telling the truth whatever the truth is in that moment and allowing your craft to change and grow over time. I think just following where you naturally go rather than forcing yourself in any direction is where the most meaningful art will come about because if you try to go against what your nature is telling you to write about, then it won’t feel genuine and it won’t have the spiritual urgency that I think makes good work. Music is something that people who may feel alienated, wherever they are in the world in their family or at school or wherever they may be, feel they are accepted into something that they can connect to. Independent music has always been at the cutting edge of making more experimental work and real truth-telling in music. The independent spirit is unbreakable.”
The forthcoming release of Parks’ first book, The Magic Border, allows fans and wordsmiths intimate access into her personal poetry. It was since a very young age that Parks knew she wanted to be a writer since words were her primary way of understanding the world and herself. Raised in London by Nigerian and Chadian-French parents, Parks’ full name is Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho. “My dad used to play audiobooks in the car,” Parks recalls. “We would have long trips from London to the south of France and he would play Moby Dick and Treasure Island, The Day Of The Triffids, The Old Man And The Sea, and we would sit in silence and listen to these stories. The way that it kind of connected my family together and also how it made me feel – that sense of connection to the characters and anticipating the next chapter – was really beautiful.”
The manifestation of her unique and insightful vision finds its artistic home in her entrancing fusion of soulful indie-pop, jazz-infused tones, alt-rock zest and poetic folk storytelling. Musically, it was her mother’s love of Prince and her father’s fondness for jazz along with West African music that she grew up with. “There was a big enjoyment of music, but I feel that I was the only person who had a real drive to create music,” says Parks. “No one else in my family has a creative job – everyone is an accountant or engineer, so I was kind of the black sheep in that way. It came as not necessary a surprise, but it’s something that’s very much outside of the realm of the paths that most people in my family have gone down, so they’re definitely super proud.”
Parks’ second album was produced between London (Church Studios owned by Paul Epworth, one of her oldest collaborators) and LA (East LA and Downtown LA) with more collaborators than she had on her debut album. “Devotion, I made with a friend who was brought up in Baltimore, which obviously had that hardcore punk scene and all these dingy basement venues brought that energy to the track,” Parks enthuses. “But a lot of the writing and the storytelling I kind of had in advance. With The Magic Border, the thoughts and ideas that I had I didn’t really want to filter into this structure of a song and I wanted to allow to be in whatever form they were in. It was under the same umbrella of feeling because it was made in that year as well, but I think The Magic Border is more unfiltered.”
She has always been insightful in her observations and articulations of people and the world – they were just channelled differently on Parks’ two albums. “The first album is very much a pandemic album in terms of how it was written, one apartment with two people,” says Parks. “Because the world was quite stagnant at the time, I ended up looking to the past or looking to the future for inspiration and for adventure. For the second album I was very much touring, ungrounded and in constant motion, so I found stillness in just sitting down and writing about my inward landscape whether it was things I was wrestling with that were hard or the love that I was experiencing and new friendships – I definitely went inward in a more intentional way. The first record was more outward, I think.”
Parks’ beautiful delicate tone is resplendent in Eugene and Pegasus, featuring Phoebe Bridgers, but there’s also an intensity in songs such as Devotion that is full of emotional dynamics. “There’s something about all my favourite artists having this sense of ‘it needs to feel dynamic; it needs to have ebbs and flows’ – this sense of a journey, especially across a record,” says Parks. “When you’re talking about feeling, there are just so many variations, even in feelings of love and sadness, so many ways to accentuate or explore feelings, so I definitely want to do more of that.”
The reach of her music has led to incredible shows in Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul and São Paolo as well as amazing performances across the UK and Europe, but her favourite touring experiences are often the ones that feel very far from home. “Being able to sell out a show in Tokyo pretty quickly and have over a thousand people dancing to songs that I made in my bedroom is so special,” Parks smiles. “Doing the Pyramid Stage (at Glastonbury 2022) with Lorde and Clairo was very special for me because I’ve watched Radiohead’s performance on that stage a million times. To be sat on that stage was really amazing.”
For Parks, it is particularly meaningful to be an inspiration for other young singer-songwriters and artists. “When I was super young and I was just starting with demoing and garage bands and finding my feet, the people who I looked up to or the people that made me feel ‘oh, maybe I can do this’ were this beacon of light, this beacon of hope,” says Parks. “Watching someone like Tyler, the Creator start off with more provocative videos like Yonkers and then really worldbuilding over time, starting a brand and being in comedy – same with people like Childish Gambino. I think there was something in those people that I looked up to that made my dreams feel within reach and being able to do that for someone else is beautiful and very special.”
At just 22 years of age (turning 23 on August 9), Parks’ everlasting appetite for new ideas and knowledge is evident in her feverish consumption of art across literature, music and film. The wordsmith is inspired by Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s book Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead and Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which she describes as “his reflection of marathon running and long distance running and how that relates to writing and the idea of running being that personal goal that you set for yourself and all that’s important is beating yourself rather than external competition.”
Musically, she’s been entranced by NTS Radio mixes (particularly Björk and Thom Yorke’s) and learning about new music from a creator’s perspective; minimal house and techno; and a label called Hessle Audio, which was founded in Leeds in 2007, that Parks describes as “really cool experimental dance music, that put out the early James Blake stuff, so I’m just in my exploratory phase that I always have before I start writing or making anything”. The talented songwriter and poet watches as many films as possible while on the road, including “everything from Irish folk horror films to keeping up with all the A24 stuff.”
“I’m always collecting, taking notes, especially when I listen to new things,” Parks smiles. “I’ll often share it with the group chat that I share with the producers that I work with. I’m always getting little random ideas for things. I give myself grace when I’m touring because that takes energy and you are giving a lot of energy every night, so maybe don’t have the ability to write as much as I would want to. But because I’m always thinking and planning, there’s always something bubbling there. I think I’d like to maybe branch off into a few different directions whether that be doing film scripts, scoring movies or writing a full novel at some point. It’ll always be in the sphere of writing because that’s what I love to do.”
Arlo Parks’ brilliant second album, My Soft Machine, is out now through [PIAS] Australia. Her debut book, The Magic Border, is available from September 14. For more information, visit ARLO PARKS (arloparksofficial.com).
