The British musician and poet guides us straight under the strobes, enriching her nu-soul with synthetic textures.
At the dawn of the 2020s’ malaise, Arlo Parks opened her discography with a debut EP whose title felt oddly apt: Super Sad Generation. Four tracks (including the hit Cola) that pulse with the heartbeat of a disillusioned, anxious, and deeply unhappy youth.
Seven years and two albums later, the British poet once again chronicles youth through Ambiguous Desire, a sunlit record that carries us straight under the moonlit strobes of a nightclub. For while youth can be sad, it also knows how to have fun, to desire, and to party. And so what about the heartbreaks that sting as long as poetry remains?
“This album, it’s me learning to have more fun”
Faithful to her subtle, sensory writing, Arlo Parks takes our hand gently and leads us on a nocturnal excursion across twelve songs: to late-night moments that smell of gin (Blue Disco), to hazy nights on the dancefloor (Get Go), to deep talks that go a little too deep (Beams), to feverish expectations of a future lover at a bar, when she feels “her heart beating stronger” (2Sided)… Nighttime adventures that inspired a more vaporous, electronic-leaning production, enriched with synths and drum machines.
Over the past two years, Arlo Parks has been partying a lot, at Midnight Lovers in Los Angeles, under the K Bridge in New York, at the M.O.T in London… “There are places where I could be who I wanted to be that night, whether I stayed in the background or threw myself into the dance and wandered on the floor for hours,” the artist confides, adding that she has fallen in love with these nocturnal spaces.
Also, the freedom to “get lost and reappear again in the world”. These life moments have deeply inspired her and given her the confidence to push her music toward new hues.
Arlo Parks continues to redraw the contours of nu-soul and, this time, does not hesitate to indulge in club, UK garage, and folk detours. She is thrilled: “This album is me learning to have more fun, embracing light as well as shade.” The project was pursued alongside Baird, a New York-based producer, with whom Parks spent long days tinkering with synthesizers and Ableton plug-ins before letting herself go, after sunset, into the night’s frenzy.
Ambiguous Desire (Transgressive Records/PIAS). Out on April 3.
