Arlo Parks

Arlo Parks released her brand new single “Green Eyes,” alongside news of her highly-anticipated debut album Collapsed In Sunbeams, set to release January 29th 2021 via Transgressive Records. “Green Eyes,” featuring backing vocals and guitar from Clairo, is an end of summer tune; an intimate listen that showcases Arlo’s trademark breathy vocals atop soft melodies and woozy keyboards. She says, “This is a song about self-discovery, self-acceptance and adolescence. It is supposed to uplift and comfort those going through hard times.” The single is accompanied by a Louis Bhose directed video.

Speaking about her debut LP, Arlo says “My album is a series of vignettes and intimate portraits surrounding my adolescence and the people that shaped it. It is rooted in storytelling and nostalgia - I want it to feel both universal and hyper specific.” Collapsed In Sunbeams will be released on 29th January 2021 on Transgressive Records. The album is available to pre-order on limited edition vinyl, CD and cassette here. The cover art and full tracklisting are available below.

The news follows the release of Arlo’s recent singles “Hurt” and “Black Dog”, both of which were playlisted simultaneously on BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music A-lists and have amassed millions of streams worldwide. Arlo also lends her vocal to the current Glass Animals single “Tangerine”, which was released last week, and Fraser T. Smith’s new track “Strangers In The Night” - the two recently performing the song on Later.. with Jools Holland.

2020 continues to see Arlo ascend, recent press features have seen her grace the cover of Evening Standard Magazine, NME and Dork Magazine as well as being included on the 2020 Dazed 100 List. And all whilst performing stand-out shows for the revered

Arlo Parks Announces Debut Album Collapsed In Sunbeams Out January 29th

COLORS and NPR’s Tiny Desk series - plus before English. A quiet child, she’d write being one of only three artists to perform at short stories and create fantasy worlds, later Glastonbury this year. She was recently asked journaling and then obsessing over spoken by Phoebe Bridgers to accompany her for a word poetry, reading American poets such as Radio 1 Piano Session, where the pair Ginsberg and Jim Morrison and watching old performed a cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Chet Baker performances on YouTube. These Plastic Trees” - watch it back here. days she references Nayyirah Waheed, Hanif Abdurraqib and Iain S. Thomas as her Arlo has also been named an ambassa- favorite modern poets, and it is clear that dor for the British mental health charity, their works are as influential on her songCALM. Whilst her songwriting has seen her writing as any musician. Books too, such as gain new fans in; Billie Eilish, Florence The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Norwegian Welch, Michelle Obama, Angel Olsen and Wood by Haruki Murakami. Parks says, “the Wyclef Jean, among others. way Murakami writes in that book is how I aspire to write my songs; gritty and sensitive On a personal level, and human.” Parks struggled with her identity growing up; a self- Fela Kuti’s Water and Otis Redding’s confessed tom-boy who was Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay sound super sensitive and “uncool,” tracked Arlo Parks’ childhood, but it was she says it was like “I’m a aged around 13 that she discovered King black kid who can’t dance Krule; an artist who would heavily influence for shit, listens to emo music the music she writes today. Later listening to and currently has a crush on more hip-hop (from Kendrick Lamar, MF some girl in my Spanish Doom and Earl Sweatshirt to the more class.” By the time she confessional sounds of Loyle Carner) and reached 17, she shaved her rock (Jimi Hendrix, Shilpa Ray and David head, figured out she was Bowie), as well as the subdued, pained bisexual and produced/wrote sounds of Keaton Henson, Sufjan Stevens an album’s worth of and Julien Baker, Parks explains, “I would material. write stories so detailed you could taste them, while maintaining the energy and life of the Growing up in South hip-hop I loved.” There’s a visual, almost West London, half Nigerian, cinematic quality to her writing too, which is a quarter Chadian and a born from her love of horror films, streetwear quarter French, Arlo Parks and abstract art. learned to speak French November 2020 • Rock and Blues International 65