Arlo Parks

Collapsed in Sunbeams, the much-awaited debut by London-based singer-songwriter Arlo Parks is out on Transgressive Records. An ambitious and introspective collection of numbers, the album offers us snippets of life moments culled from the singer’s formative years. Through the course of twelve straight-forwardly sultry, sensuous, and intoxicating tracks, Parks invites us to join her for an intimate look at an assortment of seemingly unrelated vignettes. These mostly involve a large cast of young characters as they deal firsthand with the heartbreak, disappointment, and toxicity capable of spoiling the otherwise carefree experience of youth.

Partnering up with Los-Angeles-based musician Gianluca Buccellati, Parks showcases the vivid and affective story-telling skills of a veteran auteur as she masterfully arranges an arresting collage of heartache and ennui born out of lifelong struggles with issues of identity and mental health. For the characters who populate her songs, happiness and fulfillment loom mockingly as abstract concepts. They are the apparent byproducts of a long and arduous self-healing process. One that’s dependent on establishing clear-cut boundaries, and that requires the bitter acknowledgment that these limits’ purpose is to be protective as much as corrective.

“Why do we make the simplest things so hard?” Parks asks in the bass-heavy and laid-back “Too Good .” This question stands at the album’s crux, as Parks sets out to find a convincing answer. On the one hand, she’s confronted by a world whose preexisting prejudices and biases stand as a salient roadblock to the transparency and understanding that’s necessary to forge meaningful and supportive relationships. On the other, her characters suffer from a perceived lack of self-awareness, as more often than not, they succumb to the pressures of a toxic and harmful milieu. The result is as soul-crushing as it is predictable: so long as these characters continue their lives hampered by self-destructive habits, self-doubt, and the inability to express themselves openly and without fear or to recognize their self-worth, their lives are doomed to be lived out at society’s sad and inhospitable margins.

In a seeming effort to soften the blow and delay the inevitable, Parks exhorts both character and listener to look at the brighter side of things. “You’re not alone,” she sings in the aptly-titled “Hope.” “You’re not alone like you think you are… I know it’s hard. You’re not alone.” This heartfelt plea effectively elicits large quantities of sympathy from the listener. In many ways, it reminds me of the way Van Morrison treats his characters in his classic 1968 album Astral Weeks. There’s a palpable sense of tenderness towards individuals whose lives seem irreversibly disjointed and broken. These are unfortunate survivors. Lonesome and damaged victims of a world too nasty and insouciant to reflect on and admit, let alone make ammends for, its role in their dismal quotidian realities.

Much like Morrison, Parks skillfully relates a sad and heavy subject matter through songs that sound loungy and breezy. Overall, the album is fresh and sophisticated. It successfully avoids cliches and pretentiousness as it serves up a delightful blend of Brit-pop, jazz, and neo-soul that recalls such diverse artists as the Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, and Thom Yorke. The result is a powerful and personal record that provides a diaristic glimpse into a young woman’s thoughts and ruminations as she comes to terms with her past and the world that shaped it. It also conveniently gives us what I consider to be the first great album of 2021 and a stellar debut for an artist whose career looks more than promising.