Without getting too personal, Parks says she wanted to be honest about “the grit, the things that you can’t wash off, that follow you”. The album opens with a drum-backed spoken word track, over which Parks calmly states: “Almost everyone that I love has been abused/ and I am included/ I feel so much guilt that I could not guard more people from harm.” Yearning for lost innocence, she wishes she were “seven and blameless/ Going over the handlebars/ Pollen sniffling over grazes.” Against the tangy, East Asian semitone twangs of “Impurities”, she expresses gratitude for her ability to “radiate like a star” when her lover embraces “all my impurities, and I feel clean again.”
Bereavement is one of many dark themes addressed on My Soft Machine. This is particularly effective as the song is addressing a friend’s grief following the death of his mother. She says Ross – best known for his work with Frank Ocean, Haim and Bon Iver – “warped to create a chaotic, frenetic balance” to her ethereal vocals. The London-born singer-songwriter – who won the Mercury Prize for her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams – soothed listeners through the latter days of the pandemic with gently jazzy meditations on the simple joy to be found in “feeding a cat or slicing artichoke hearts”. While Yorke was singing about being trapped in “a job that slowly kills you” back in 1998, Parks’ new song finds her describing “struggling, choking on my words”. But I’ve always loved the video for Radiohead’s “No Surprises” and I wanted to give a nod to that influence…” “We’d attached the big camera to the top to get those claustrophobic shots and all that weight was pressing down on my neck. She’s recalling shooting the video for “Blades” from her second album, My Soft Machine. That space helmet was really heavy, I was sweating!” laughs Arlo Parks.
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