Arlo Parks: My Soft Machine album review — a turn to pop suffocated by high expectations

“When I think about how I made the record, it’s very personal and private,” Arlo Parks told the FT last year about her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams. Sourced from the west Londoner’s teenage diaries, its songs were a fine-grained blend of closely observed feelings and easy-going tunes. “I lick the grief right off your lips,” runs the attention-grabbing opening line to a track about depression, set to a hazy Hammersmith daydream of bossa nova.

Released in 2021 when she was 20, the album was a critical and commercial hit. It won the Mercury prize and gained its maker best newcomer award at the Brits. Admirers included Billie Eilish, who recruited the singer-songwriter as a touring support act. To Parks’ discomfort, commentators hailed her as the voice of Gen Z. Her “very personal and private” album had turned her into a public figure.

Its follow-up presents her with a quandary. Collapsed in Sunbeams managed to sound at ease with itself while telling stories of young people who don’t feel at ease with themselves. This delicate chemistry was the product of a time and place that success has taken her away from. At one level, it’s an enviable situation. But it also requires her, as a still-green songwriter, to find a new register, this time with the eyes of the world on her. 

My Soft Machine stumbles at the hurdle. The album’s title is taken from a film, The Souvenir, as its predecessor was named after a phrase from a Zadie Smith novel. Like its predecessor it opens with a recited poem, this time an overburdened affair about adult pain and childhood innocence. The songs’ mellow beats are sharper and more polished, a dial shift towards mainstream pop. Indie textures are applied with a degree of self-consciousness, like the refined echo of a Pixies riff in “Dog Rose”. 

Lyrics tell of relationships in young adulthood. There are fewer characters than in Collapsed in Sunbeams, and also more repetition. Sing-song refrains with discouraging sentiments about not trusting others or knowing what to do try to turn negative thoughts into melodious music, but lack the vibrancy of before. Parks’ unforced voice sounds smoother and more generic. “Tethered to the person you could be,” she sings in “Weightless” of a difficult lover she doesn’t want to give up on. The same might be said of this album, tethered as it is to a better predecessor, and also an unhelpful weight of expectation.

★★☆☆☆

‘My Soft Machine’ is released by Transgressive