Arlo Parks has unveiled her second studio album, ‘My Soft Machine’.
The 22-year-old singer – who won the 2021 Mercury Prize with ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’ – will release the follow-up on May 26, and has given fans a taste of what’s to come with the ethereal lead single, ‘Weightless’.
Speaking of the meaning behind the track, she said: “’Weightless’ surrounds the painful experience of caring deeply about someone who only gives you tiny breadcrumbs of affection. 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.”
Arlo explores some dark subjects on the emotional LP, including “mid-20s anxiety, the substance abuse of friends around me, the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating PTSD and grief.”
She shared: “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’.”
Phoebe Bridgers is featured on the track ‘Pegasus’, the only duet on the 12-track LP.
The ‘My Soft Machine’ track-listing:
1.’Bruiseless’
2.’Impurities’
3.’Devotion’
4.’Blades’
5.’Purple Phase’
6.’Weightless’
7.’Pegasus’ ft. Phoebe Bridgers
8.’Dog Rose’
9.’Puppy’
10.’I’m Sorry’
11.’Room (red wings)’
12.’Ghost’