Admittedly, “voice of a generation” is an epithet that gets thrown around a lot, but when Arlo Parks released Collapsed in Sunbeams in 2021, it felt apt. The album was praised for its diaristic lyrics, which cleaved closer to poetry than pop music, and her soft but acute observations of the rising mental health crisis among Gen Z resonated with listeners who were tuning in mid-pandemic. The British Parks won the Mercury Prize for her debut effort, and now lives in sunny LA with her girlfriend, the blue-haired, alt-pop rapper Ashnikko, whom one can only guess had a lot to do with Parks’s new record.
Like her first album, My Soft Machine – a nod to Joanna Hogg’s 2019 romance The Souvenir – opens with a spoken-word track. This time it’s a lament for childhood. Over dry, jammy drums and a chillwave beat, Parks wishes to be “seven and blameless”. She is careful with every consonant, enunciating each one so they come out crisp like the first bite of an apple. Smuggled in the nostalgia, though, is our first hint that this album will not be so despairing. “The person I love is patient with me, she’s feeding me cheese and I’m happy…”
