Arlo Parks On Working With Phoebe Bridgers, Exchanging Poetry With Lorde & More

Arlo Parks knows her art can’t please everyone — a notion she leaned into on her second album, My Soft Machine, which arrived May 26 on Transgressive Records. Following her critically acclaimed 2021 debut, Collapsed in Sunbeams, which earned the London-based 22-year-old a best new artist Grammy nomination, her poetically complex and genre-agnostic follow-up doesn’t fit neatly into any boxes designed to cluster Black, women or queer artists — as intended.

Inspired by a wide breadth of musical artists (Deftones, Tyler, The Creator) and writers (Zadie Smith, Ocean Vuong), Parks says, “I think my music is pretty cool. I know where it is coming from contextually, and people who enjoy my music understand that, too, and that’s all that’s important to me.” She has since found her people within the indie and queer music scene, and now comfortably takes her place among the canon of artists confidently creating outside the norm. “I definitely have that desire for community-building and just being a student of other people’s processes,” she says.

As you were making this album, did a cohesive ethos emerge?

Initially, it was very much a collection of songs made with different people as little isolated moments of magic in the studio. Then when I sat down at Electric Lady [Studios in New York] to listen to the demos, I was like, “There’s a thread here.” I am saying a lot more. I am pushing away from the more minimal, soul-based sound of Collapsed in Sunbeams. I want to dig into my tastes. I want to wear my influences on my sleeve. I want to create something that feels a lot more sculpted rather than more instinctive — that was very much my energy for Collapsed in Sunbeams. But I really want to chip at marble over time with this. The thread or the ethos is something I realized after the fact rather than going into it with a mission statement. I was like, “This is about my life rather than observing other people.” That was at the core of everything.

Album single “Pegasus” features Phoebe Bridgers. How did that come about?

We’ve sung before, but never on [a] record. We’ve done some covers and played together at Coachella. I’ve always looked up to her as a vocalist and as a storyteller, and also as a shape-shifter. She can go on a SZA track or a Kid Cudi track, she can go wherever and blend into the world while still being completely herself. I love features that feel organic. I did feel that sense of kinship between our voices. It felt natural to ask her, and she said yes. The rest is history.

Do you strive to be a shape-shifter like Phoebe?

It’s definitely something that I want to do because my tastes stretch so far. I would be just as happy on a song with Aphex Twin or Actress as I would be with Dean Blunt or Tyler, The Creator. I love music as a whole. Whether I’d be any good fitting into their worlds, I don’t know. My favorite thing about being in the studio or meeting other artists and sending each other poetry or fragments of writing [is] being like, “I would have never thought to put it that way.”

Are there any other artists you have that exchange with?

One of my favorite people to get recommendations [from] on music, poetry, novels is definitely Lorde. I have never met anyone with her breadth of knowledge and her taste. She recommended a [short story] collection by Lucia Berlin called Evening in Paradise and this book called Animal Joy [by Nuar Alsadir] that happened to already be on my reading list. It’s kind of magical. Not everybody is connected, but especially in the indie space, we are friends and support each other. You never feel like you’re alone in anything, which is really nice.

What other artists inspire you?

If you take Björk, Poly Styrene [of X-Ray Spex] or Arthur Russell, there is an outsider quality to a lot of the music that I love. I love the things that people found strange at the time, with these little idiosyncrasies and the things that made them slightly offbeat or slightly outside of the normal. It taught me that was OK and that you can just be, and that you’ll find your people.

In October, you’re playing the festival All Things Go, which boasts a lineup heavy on queer representation. How are you feeling about that gig?

It’s actually all my people. I feel so excited to have lineups that have moments like that where queer people and nonbinary people and talented human beings are given that space to come together. It’s like one massive family, especially on the second day with me and Ethel Cain and MUNA and boygenius and beabadoobee. I love the idea of creating more of those kinds of queer-positive spaces at festivals. There’s a lot of freedom and power in that.

This story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.