Arlo Parks joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss her new song “Impurities” from her forthcoming album ‘My Soft Machine’. She tells Apple Music about the origin of the track, exploring new sounds and ways of working, how finding an audience has impacted her craft, moving to LA and finding her community, and more.
Arlo Parks Tells Apple Music About Her New Single “Impurities”…
So I worked a lot with Ramil. I mean, this song in particular, Impurities, was Carter Lang and Ramil. And I honestly just chose them because I was a big fan, and I felt like the first track on the record is more spoken word. And this is the first 'song' song on the record. And I wanted it to feel like a door opening, and that sense of atmosphere. I think it started off as a celebration of the new community that I'd found in LA, and the people that made me feel like myself, and like I could be myself. And then I started thinking about the idea of someone completing you and somebody taking on the things about you that you don't like, and somehow saving you. And that double meaning I think was really interesting. I wanted it to feel like searching. I wanted it to feel like I was adrift in a way, and then the lyrics then root you in. It's the people, the people of the home, and I love the people that make me feel at home. It was one of those songs that almost happened by accident because it was the first day that me and Rome met, and we spent most of the day just hanging out. And then this was just made as an aside, and very, very quickly. And he just played me that sample and the lightning bolt just struck, and I recorded it. And then I was like, "Okay, let's go back to hanging out and listening to The Beatles ... and driving around." Yeah, and I think that those songs that happen almost by accident, all that feel like you're just channeling something. You're just a vessel for this moment. And I think I only started to really understand what I was writing about retrospectively in the moment. It just was like, I needed it.
Arlo Parks Tells Apple Music About Her New Album ‘My Soft Machine’…
I feel like honestly, when a record is finished, the space is cleared in my heart and it becomes then a gift that I give away, and then there's just space, a complete blank slate, and I feel like the record was made in this very contained period of time and nothing else would really fit. It was just this one snapshot. I guess I didn't go into making this record with an intention. It was just like, I don't know. I was taking notes of growth, I guess unconsciously, and just taking notes of what was around me and how I felt about the world and how that changed and just made music that felt really good. I was just chasing that feeling. …a lot of the record is about feeling deeply and surrendering to that feeling, or closing up and hiding behind walls. I think even in terms of the instrumentation, there are moments that are a little bit more abrasive and energized and there are moments that are more soft and hypnotic, and I just wanted something that had that sense of context.
Arlo Parks Tells Apple Music How Finding an Audience Has Impacted Her Craft…
I feel like the process that I make music by is always going to be quite insular. But I try and cultivate that almost. I like the idea of feeling like a teenager in my bedroom all the time. I like feeling like I'm away from the world, and then I can craft this little thing that is just for me, at least for now. "I can be brave. I can be myself." And that I guess encouraged me to go inwards a lot more radically on this record rather than speaking about characters and people outside of me. It was a lot more I and the self.
Arlo Parks Tells Apple Music About Finding a Positive Sense of Community in Los Angeles…
I think maybe I came here just completely open. I didn't really have that many pre-existing notions of what it might be like, and I came also wanting to make a record and having these people who I had that thing in common with who were just creative and loved music. And that community just spread out into all kinds of creative people, and I don't know, I think I found it. It feels like home. I think there was this sense of the city did embrace me, and I feel like I don't know, I wanted a new adventure. And I just found good people and made a record that I love, and that's made me think of LA fondly forever.
Arlo Parks Tells Apple Music About Learning Patience...
I think it took me a while to learn patience. I think especially when it comes to writing, I want it to be perfect now, and I think I had that real sense of frantically searching for the perfect way to say something, the perfect phrasing, the perfect chord. But then I actually in this writing process found proof that when you actually leave things alone and allow for them to take the time that they're going to take, then that's when the best things come.
Arlo Parks Reflects on Her Debut Acclaimed Album ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’…
I think it is what it is. I rarely use the word perfect, but I feel like it captures where I was then and it felt honest, and it felt like who I was at the time. It feels like light years ago. Honestly, it feels like so long ago. I feel like I've lived a lot of life in between then and now.
