It's nearing two years since Arlo Parks had her breakout moment with the debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams. Today, she's returned with a new single "Weightless" that announces her follow-up album My Soft Machine that's out May 26 via Transgressive. The new single continues Parks' stride of emotionally charged, spectral pop music; she puts sculpts empathetic vignettes like a glassmaker piecing together a scene in stained glass.
“'Weightless' surrounds the painful experience of caring deeply about someone who only gives you tiny breadcrumbs of affection," Parks said about the new song. "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.”
She continued in the press release to detail her forthcoming album: “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."
She goes on to cite Joanna Hogg's film The Souvenir as the source of the album's title. "[The film] 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.”
Watch the gripping video for "Weightless" below.
