We hear Arlo Parks before we see her. The singer-songwriter emerges from the gloom at the back of this south-west London club’s stage words-first, speaking more than singing – her soft tones recognisable, even before we glimpse her Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral T-shirt and red-tinged, close-cropped hair. “I wish I was bruiseless,” Parks begins. Her band add some loose breakbeats and an intriguing jazzy thrum to a track that is the opening to her new album, My Soft Machine. “Almost everyone I love has been abused/ And I am included.”
Parks has been out of sight for some time, putting the finishing touches to her highly anticipated second full-length outing, released this week. But the first few seconds of her re-emergence at this low-key gig could not be a more succinct reminder of her appeal: the way she plants emotional depth charges inside a deceptively easygoing musical manner. We learn, too, as Bruiseless spools out, that she is “listening to Loomer” (by My Bloody Valentine) – and that “the person I love is feeding me cheese, and I’m happy”.
