My Soft Machine (Deluxe) Arlo Parks

• 1 Bruiseless 01:11
• 2 Impurities 03:49
• 3 Devotion 02:45
• 4 Blades 03:41
• 5 Purple Phase 04:24
• 6 Weightless 04:02
• 7 Pegasus (ft. Phoebe Bridgers) 03:06
• 8 Dog Rose 03:08
• 9 Puppy 03:13
• 10 I'm Sorry 03:07
• 11 Room (red wings) 04:28
• 12 Ghost 03:47
• 13 Jasmine 03:39
• 14 I'm Sorry (ft. Lous and The Yakuza) 03:07
• 15 Blades (ft. redveil) 03:41
• 16 Devotion (Acoustic) 02:41
• 17 Pegasus (Acoustic) 03:00
• 18 Holding On 02:48
• Total Runtime 59:37

Info for My Soft Machine (Deluxe)

Twice Grammy-nominated, Mercury Prize and Brit Award-winning artist Arlo Parks is returning with her second album, My Soft Machine on Transgressive Records. My Soft Machine is a deeply personal body of work; a narration of Parks’ experiences as she navigates her 20’s and the growth intertwined. Explained ever-articulately in her own words below...

“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.” (Arlo Parks)

“‘Jasmine’ has always moved me deeply — to me it’s this shadowy, timeless and incredibly profound love song,” Parks says in a press release. “I really wanted to draw out the yearning of the lyrics and pay homage to an artist who has had a seismic impact on me and on culture. Receiving Jai Paul’s blessing to create this cover with Dave Okumu was one of the highlights of my creative journey so far.”

“Music that captures modern-day misery in a way that feels improbably heartening” - The New York Times

“I love Arlo” - Billie Eilish

“She's an incredible poet” - Phoebe Bridgers

Arlo Parks

Arlo Parks
On a personal level, Parks struggled with her identity growing up; a self-confessed tom boy who was super sensitive and "uncool", she says it was like "I'm a black kid who can't dance for shit, listens to emo music and currently has a crush on some girl in my Spanish class." By the time she reached 17, she shaved her head, figured out she was bisexual and produced/wrote an album's worth of material.

Growing up in South West London, half Nigerian, a quarter Chadian and a quarter French, Arlo Parks learned to speak French before English. A quiet child, she'd write short stories and create fantasy worlds, later journalling and then obsessing over spoken word poetry, reading American poets such as Ginsberg and Jim Morrison and watching old Chet Baker performances on YouTube. These days she references Nayyirah Waheed, Hanif Abdurraqib and Iain S. Thomas as her favourite modern poets, and it is clear that their works are as influential on her songwriting as any musician. Books too, such as The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Parks says, "the way Murakami writes in that book is how I aspire to write my songs; gritty and sensitive and human."

Fela Kuti's 'Water' and Otis Redding's 'Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay' soundtracked Arlo Parks' childhood, but it was aged around 13 that she discovered King Krule; an artist who would heavily influence the music she writes today. Later listening to more hip-hop (from Kendrick Lamar and Earl Sweatshirt to the more confessional sounds of Loyle Carner) and rock (Jimi Hendrix, Shilpa Ray and David Bowie), as well as the subdued, pained sounds of Keaton Henson, Sufjan Stevens and Julien Baker, Parks explains, "I would write stories so detailed you could taste them, while maintaining the energy and life of the hip-hop I loved." There's a visual, almost cinematic quality to her writing too, which is born from her love of horror films, streetwear and abstract art.

This album contains no booklet.