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Some nights out are so euphoric, so life-affirming, that it can be difficult to put the experience into words. But Arlo Parks, as ever, finds a way. “You know when the night just flows, time kind of dissolves, and you’re lost in it,” she says with a wistful smile, remembering the moment when she first truly felt at one with the dancefloor.
It was April 2024, and the singer had just reached the end of the tour for her second album, My Soft Machine, in Brooklyn. After months on the road, pouring everything into her shows and exchanging energy with audiences, she was ready to let go and celebrate. Parks and her bandmates headed to the now-closed underground nightclub Black Flamingo. There, in the club’s basement, she realised the transformative power of dance music.
“It was almost like a womb, it felt like you were inside the speaker,” says the 25-year-old. Parks had been clubbing before, but this time, surrounded by a hundred dancing bodies, the collective joy in the room felt almost transcendent. “I was looking around, and there were so many different people from so many walks of life. I felt a sense of belonging there, because, in a way, everyone belonged.” They ended the night in a Chinese restaurant opposite the club. Parks’ journey into the world of nightlife, however, had only just begun.
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If you’re one of the more than two million Spotify listeners who’ve let her voice soundtrack life's most tender moments – from reflective Sunday afternoons to breakups, burnout and grief – you might be surprised by her turn to dance music. The Arlo Parks, who won the Mercury Prize for her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, in 2021, then followed it up two years later with My Soft Machine, rocketed to cultural prestige with her knack for raw introspection: lyrics that excavate the corners of the human psyche and parse the findings into words that can bring grown men to tears. Her soft, delicate vocals are a warm sonic hug, making listeners feel a little less alone; her smooth blend of indie, soul and storytelling soothes difficult emotions. Not exactly stuff made for 12-hour raves.
But on her upcoming third record, Ambiguous Desire, Parks threads her diaristic pen through faster beats and headier, afters-ready production. Her keen observations and heart-on-sleeve lyrics are still there, just in a different context. Take the opening track ‘Blue Disco’, for example, which drops us in the middle of a house party complete with deep chats and weak stomachs – not exactly a dance track, more a vibe-setter with grungy guitars. Things quickly ramp up with subtle breakbeats and pirate radio samples on “Get Go”, then oscillate between the come up and come down throughout the album: a woozy collab with Sampha on “Senses”, crescendoing harmonies on “Nightswimming”, soaring sparkling synths on lead single “2SIDED”.
It’s all the product of the club crusade Parks set upon after that night in Brooklyn, going out in every city she stepped foot in – institutions like Nowadays and Basement in New York, scrappier, warehouse raves in LA, where she’s lived since 2022. “I was fascinated by and became a student of these nocturnal spaces – buying all these books, researching and collecting imagery,” she says. “I was just writing about what I was living.”
When you really think about Parks’ work, it makes sense. At the heart of everything she does is an intense feeling of connection, whether that’s to her listeners or the world around her – take, for example, the vivid scene she paints of a couple fighting at a bus stop on her 2020 single “Caroline”. Embracing more after-dark thrills simply broadens the scope. And it couldn’t come at a better time. As the cultural climate swerves towards conservatism and bigotry, keeping two feet on the dancefloor is an act of resistance.
“Historically, nightclubs have very much been a sanctuary for queer people, or all different kinds of people who feel like outsiders in the world,” says Parks. “Thinking about the Loft or Paradise Garage in the late '70s, early '80s, with the AIDS crisis, being in those spaces was almost a vibe check of who was safe and who wasn't, so people could have these spaces where they were protected and could express themselves however they wanted to. Keeping that essence, culture and history alive is so important.”
Over the past few years, Parks’ perspective has evolved in other ways, too. The young artist who drove herself to burnout, eventually cancelling a string of shows in 2022 due to feeling “exhausted and dangerously low”, has learned to set boundaries. As she steps into this next era, she’s listening to her gut as much as the music. “I feel really in touch with myself, my levels of fatigue and my stress levels,” she says. And although her schedule is quickly filling up again, she’s purposefully finding “little pockets of fun everywhere”, whether she’s binging David Cronenberg films, delving into Kim Gordon’s memoir or hanging out with her ever-expanding tribe in LA – friendships with Lorde, Lucy Dacus, Vagabon and DJ Maddie Gavin that nourish her socially and creatively.
“It's almost more preventative self-care, rather than reactionary,” she explains. “That's also what a lot of this record is about: achieving peace and feeling settled in myself. I feel happier than ever, and that allows me to parse between when I need a break and when I feel good.”
That’s exactly the foundation you need when you’re playing the long game – which, of course, Parks is. “I’ve always had this really strong sense of wanting to create a legacy, being someone who uplifts younger people,” she says. She namechecks Solange’s recent appointment as a professor at the University of California, where she’ll teach and host workshops. “I would love to do that, to be a teacher, to pass on my knowledge.”
Sure, Arlo Parks is living for the here and now – on the dancefloor and beyond. But the drive that fuels her will endure for much longer. “I just want to be ever curious.”
Ambiguous Desire by Arlo Parks will be released on 3 April.
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