Arlo Parks announces new album ‘My Soft Machine’
It’s been almost exactly two years since British singer Arlo Parks released her critically acclaimed debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams. After taking home the Mercury Prize and getting showered with a ton of praise, Parks is now ready to start it all back up again with her sophomore LP, My Soft Machine.
“The world/our view of it is peppered by the biggest things we experience – our traumas, upbringing, vulnerabilities almost like visual snow,” Parks explains in a press release. “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.”
The album’s title was found by Parks thanks to her love of film.”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.”
To preview the new record, Parks has shared the album’s first single, ‘Weightless’. Containing the same progressive R&B and light vocal tones that made Parks such a unique figure in British music, ‘Weightless’ doubles down on the airy synth tones, driving rhythms, and pop hooks that make Parks’ music so intoxicating.
“‘Weightless’ surrounds the painful experience of caring deeply about someone who only gives you tiny breadcrumbs of affection,” Parks explains. “It’s about suddenly realising that a person has dulled your edges and embarking on the slow journey back to being a brighter version of yourself.”
Check out the video for ‘Weightless’, plus the tracklisting for My Soft Machine, down below. My Soft Machine is set for a May 26th release.
My Soft Machine tracklisting:
- ‘Bruiseless’
- ‘Impurities’
- ‘Devotion’
- ‘Blades’
- ‘Purple Phase’
- ‘Weightless’
- ‘Pegasus’ (ft. Phoebe Bridgers)
- ‘Dog Rose’
- ‘Puppy’
- ‘I’m Sorry’
- ‘Room (Red Wings)’
- ‘Ghost’
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