Album Review: Arlo Parks - Ambiguous Desire

Arlo Parks
Ambiguous Desire

On her effervescent third record, Parks shifts to the dancefloor with ethereal and emphatic results.

★★★★

Arlo Parks is an innovator. It’s easy to forget she was only 21 when winning the Mercury Prize for her outstanding debut album ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’. Reviewing it at the time for Gigwise, I was taken aback by her incredible lyricism, describing it as “a beautiful combination of performance, poetry, and emotion that stops you in your tracks”.

It’s been compelling to watch her develop her talent in the five years since that victory. It would have been easy and obvious to follow Sunbeams with another collection of poetic jazz-infused pop folk, but what’s so bold about Parks is her desire to break new ground with each release, remaining effortlessly unpredictable.

Parks has precedent; her second record, ‘My Soft Machine’, flirted with more fluorescent and dreamlike production as she embraced bringing in collaborators to flesh out and explore her sound. Meanwhile, 2022’s excellent standalone single, ‘Softly’, shines bright amongst her discography as an experimental twinkly R&B jam that hinted at a flirtation with dance music. That means the shift completely towards the dancefloor with her latest record, ‘Ambiguous Desire,’ feels like a natural and earned shift.

It’s an album soaked in the sweaty euphoria of sharing the nightclub dancefloor with the one you love dearest. It feels situated in a unique realm of the genre, spiritually much more aligned with the house, techno and UK garage beats of Katy B’s groundbreaking debut ‘On A Mission’ than the current flavour of the moment Charli XCX’s ‘brat’, for instance. This is best encapsulated by the lead single ‘2SIDED’, which swirls into life with a growling synthline before blossoming into a spritely dissonance.  Parks’ hazy vocals, meanwhile, glide through the beat like she’s moving through a heavy nightclub crowd, gently brushing against the friction of the percussion.  

That push and pull of Park’s naturally airy, calming vocals with the genre’s harsh, layered production makes for an enticing sonic world to enter. Opener ‘Blue Disco’ sets the tone from the outset. This is a sonic journey that has much in common with Beabadoobee as it does Burial. 

‘Get Go’ is a joyous homage to her London roots. A pirate radio station crackles as the track bursts into life. Parks is a remarkable scene setter and can turn the everyday into the extraordinary with just a verse; it’s a thread throughout her discography. Here she uses her skills to take us on a night out; her friend Maria is in a spiral of heartache, with Parks helping her dance through the pain. The bliss of their night spent under the strobes can be felt through Park's euphoric delivery of the chorus. It’s an exquisite example of what Parks music does best. 

There’s a singular guest appearance from fellow London singer-songwriter and Mercury winner Sampha, who is the perfect complement to Parks on the vulnerable ‘Senses’. When speaking about dance music and being based in Wales, it would be amiss not to mention the floating melody of ‘Heaven’, which sees Parks finding release in a set from Welsh electronic star Kelly Lee Owens; however, the twinkling, sparse piano keys that flutter through the track are more reminiscent of Lapsley or James Blake.

‘Ambiguous Desire’ works best at its most direct and focused; tracks such as ‘2SIDED’ and ‘Get Go’ slot nicely into the catalogue of Parks best tracks. At its most airy and free-flowing, the album can fall into a sort of perpetual floatiness, with the tracks melding into each other a little too seamlessly. When it grabs you back, though, it’s sublime, and I can’t wait to see how these tracks find their feet within a live setting.