Arlo Parks has caught up with NME backstage at Reading & Leeds 2023, and discussed her upcoming poetry book, response to her latest album, and surprise set with Holly Humberstone.
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00:00 (audience cheering)
00:03 - Hi, I'm Liberty.
00:07 I'm here with NME at Leeds and Reading 2023.
00:10 I'm sat here with the wonderful Ali Parks.
00:12 - Hello. - How are you doing?
00:14 - I'm good, thanks for having me.
00:15 - Yeah, no worries.
00:16 Welcome to Reading.
00:17 How was your set?
00:18 - It was really fun.
00:18 Honestly, this is my first time at Reading,
00:21 not as a punter, 'cause I came here when I was about 15,
00:24 under very different context.
00:26 So it's nice to be here a few years later.
00:29 And playing this festival is really special.
00:31 So I feel like it's a lot of people's first festival.
00:34 So there is that kind of fresh, youthful excitement,
00:37 which I really love about Reading.
00:38 - Exactly.
00:39 What was the crowd like for you while you were here?
00:41 'Cause it is quite early in the day.
00:42 The weather's been a little bit hit and miss.
00:44 - It's funny 'cause as soon as,
00:46 you know, it was two minutes 'til stage,
00:48 and suddenly the heavens opened,
00:49 and the rain was pouring down.
00:51 And I was like, "Oh God, what's it gonna be like?"
00:53 And then on the second song, the rain stopped completely,
00:56 and there was a little rainbow.
00:57 And I feel like that was a good sign.
00:59 - It's quite fitting, right?
01:00 - Yeah, and honestly, people were really giving me a lot.
01:03 Like, people were really engaged.
01:05 I feel like there was this sense of, like,
01:07 people showing up for me.
01:09 I felt really, like, supported and held, which is cool.
01:12 - And fans were very, very lucky today.
01:14 They didn't just get to see you once.
01:16 You also made your special guest appearance
01:18 with Polly Humberston.
01:19 - Yes.
01:20 - How was that?
01:21 What was that like?
01:21 - Oh, she's the sweetest, honestly.
01:23 We bumped into each other a couple of times,
01:26 and I was a big fan of her music.
01:28 And then she asked me, kind of last minute,
01:30 whether I wanted to kind of join her on stage.
01:32 And it's something that I absolutely love doing.
01:34 Like, I did it at Glastonbury with Phoebe
01:37 and a Coachella as well,
01:38 and I think there's something really special
01:39 about joining the stage with a friend.
01:42 And "Room Service" is such a beautiful song, you know,
01:44 that sense of missing your friends from afar
01:47 and wanting to kind of lock yourself away from the world
01:50 and reconnect and kind of delve into your friendship.
01:52 So it was a special song to do as well, for sure.
01:55 - You've got to tell us,
01:56 have you heard the new album by any chance?
01:58 - No, I haven't. - For upcoming debut?
02:00 - I haven't, I haven't.
02:01 - You need to get working on that.
02:02 Give us a scoop.
02:03 - I know, I know.
02:04 I need to, I'll get undercover.
02:06 - Everyone's really looking forward to it.
02:08 - Yeah.
02:09 - You can report back to us.
02:10 - I'll report back.
02:11 - Hey, let's talk about your upcoming project.
02:13 Let's talk about "The Magic Border."
02:15 So what made you want to pursue, like, a poetry book?
02:17 Why is that so important for you now?
02:19 - Yeah, you know, I wanted to be a writer
02:21 before I wanted to be a musician.
02:23 Like, I always wanted to write books and poetry and scripts.
02:26 So that's kind of my first love, I guess, in a way.
02:29 And I never really had the courage to do it.
02:31 For some reason, I was kind of nervous
02:33 about declaring that I was an author to the world.
02:36 For some reason, that felt a little bit more terrifying.
02:40 But because I was writing on the road
02:42 and kind of collecting all these fragments in my notebooks,
02:45 I decided to kind of build a book
02:47 out of kind of what I didn't include in my record
02:50 and ideas that I wanted to just kind of leave as they were.
02:53 And then my best friend contributed photographs
02:55 of his, you know, like, lovers and people he grew up with
02:59 and people he observed in the streets of Berlin and New York
03:01 and kind of created this tapestry.
03:04 So it happened really organically, for sure.
03:06 - What made you think now is the right time to do it?
03:08 So obviously there's so many factors that came into it.
03:11 What made you think, okay, 2023,
03:13 the same year that you've just put out a new album,
03:15 what made now the right time for you?
03:17 - Honestly, it was just intuition.
03:19 I think it just felt right to do it.
03:21 And I think, you know, I always view what I do
03:25 as very much a journey,
03:26 like something that I wanna gradually
03:28 kind of add to over the years.
03:30 So this felt like a nice time to make the first step.
03:33 And who knows what's next?
03:34 - Yeah.
03:35 And a lot of the book as well is some of your lyrics, right?
03:39 From "My Soft Machine."
03:41 - Yeah.
03:41 - Why was it important for you to showcase your lyrics
03:44 in different ways?
03:45 So not just in a audio way,
03:47 but also something that you can read.
03:48 Do you think it helps fans connect with you
03:50 in a different way?
03:51 - Definitely, definitely.
03:53 And I think also showing the lyrics kind of juxtaposed
03:56 with the poetry and seeing how they kind of melt
03:58 into one another.
04:00 And I've always loved, 'cause I'm a lover of lyrics,
04:02 I guess that's what I look for in a song.
04:05 And every time that I'm listening to a record,
04:07 you know, I'll be holding the vinyl
04:09 and like reading the lyric sheet.
04:10 And that's something that's important to me as a fan.
04:12 So I like the idea of kind of giving that to fans of me.
04:16 And hopefully they kind of discover little nuggets
04:18 that they hadn't discovered before.
04:20 - What kind of artists did you have that with?
04:22 Or albums in particular?
04:24 - Oh my goodness, so, so many.
04:26 There are artists like, I'm a big fan of Big Thief,
04:30 the indie band.
04:31 And I do that a lot with Adrian Lenka's lyrics,
04:33 'cause they're so rich and poetic and beautiful.
04:36 I used to do it a lot when I was younger,
04:38 'cause I was like a big fan of rock music.
04:40 So a lot of like Deftones and like Arctic Monkeys.
04:43 Their first record was the first record I ever bought
04:47 on my little like iPod Nano,
04:48 is that what it's called?
04:49 Like the tiny little ones.
04:50 - The tiny, tiny ones.
04:51 - Yeah, and I was like, I was obsessively reading
04:54 all the lyrics to that record.
04:55 I love that album.
04:56 - Amazing, which Monkeys album was that?
04:58 - The first one, the very first one.
04:59 - The debut, can't go wrong.
05:01 - I love that, like the first album is usually my favorite
05:03 of a lot of different artists,
05:05 'cause there is that purity I think to it.
05:07 Like where they're just doing it at home in their own way
05:09 and no one has really discovered them yet, so yeah.
05:12 - Yeah, it really shows them in their purest form,
05:14 doesn't it? - Mm, exactly.
05:15 - Before they start working out what people like,
05:17 what people don't like. - Exactly.
05:18 - It's exactly who they are.
05:19 - It is, it is.
05:20 And I feel, I don't know, I feel very connected
05:23 to the sense of like trying to maintain that spirit
05:27 of like doing it as if no one was watching,
05:29 as if it was the very first time.
05:31 So I try and like hold onto that as much as possible.
05:35 - So it's been a couple of months
05:36 since you put out My Soft Machine.
05:39 Now that it's had a bit of time to simmer, sit with fans,
05:41 what have you noticed that the response
05:43 has been like from them?
05:44 - It's been really wonderful, honestly.
05:46 I think in this album making process,
05:48 I was taking a few risks, you know,
05:50 even like songs like "Devotion,"
05:52 having more kind of heavier rock moments
05:54 and involving a lot more of my own production,
05:56 you know, it felt, it felt kind of scary
05:59 to take those risks and kind of see how people reacted.
06:02 But I think especially playing festivals like today
06:05 and doing my headline tour in Japan and Australia
06:07 and like seeing how the work had reached,
06:10 I feel like the fans have really enjoyed it, which is cool.
06:13 - It reminds me of, I think it was in 2021,
06:16 just after you put out your debut,
06:18 you spoke to NME about the response that you got from fans
06:22 and how you found it really sort of bizarre and weird
06:24 that you could write a song in your London flat
06:28 and people across the world would know the words to it.
06:31 Now it's been a couple of years since then,
06:32 do you still have that little bit of sense of disbelief?
06:36 - I still, obviously, like definitely.
06:39 I think there's no way that that can ever feel normal.
06:42 You know, I think that especially so many people
06:45 spend their whole lives writing music
06:47 in their bedrooms or in studios
06:49 and it never kind of reaches beyond their friendship group.
06:52 And I think that being able to be in Tokyo
06:55 and sell out a room and have people
06:57 like singing along to lyrics
06:58 when it's not even their native language,
07:01 it's always gonna be something
07:02 that I think I'll never take for granted.
07:04 - How has it evolved since you first put out your debut then
07:07 because you must be now more used to the massive crowds,
07:10 you must be more used to the fan response.
07:12 Would you say it's brought you closer to your fans,
07:14 understanding it more and getting more feedback?
07:16 - Definitely, I think that, you know,
07:18 being on stage and being used
07:20 to so many different kinds of crowds
07:22 means that you can just always have fun.
07:25 Like the nerves, there's still an element of nerves,
07:27 but it kind of, the nerves evaporate, I think a little bit
07:30 and it leaves space for just like playfulness
07:33 and just like having specific moment with specific people
07:36 and kind of being really present and in what you're doing.
07:40 So I think that at first,
07:41 especially coming out of the pandemic,
07:42 I hadn't really toured before.
07:43 Suddenly I was kind of thrust onto these stages
07:46 and felt very kind of overwhelming
07:49 and now it's just beautiful, you know?
07:51 - Going forward, I know it's still very, very early days,
07:55 but with My Soft Machine,
07:57 you have explored more genres, I'd say.
07:59 So like you said, you've got the more rock elements,
08:01 you've also got some more dancey, like upbeat bits there
08:04 that you can really like dance along to.
08:07 How would you like to evolve more going forward?
08:09 Is there any more genres that you'd like to maybe explore
08:12 or hone in on?
08:14 - Yeah, I think that I usually just allow it
08:16 to kind of evolve naturally, but I really liked,
08:20 for example, a song like "Blades,"
08:21 which has those more kind of like disco-y, dancey elements.
08:25 I love the way that people respond to that
08:26 when I play it live.
08:27 Like I want something that feels euphoric,
08:30 that people can really like let loose to
08:32 and share with their friends and listen to on road trips.
08:35 So a bit of that, and then also maybe something
08:37 in the kind of like, I guess, R&B adjacent world.
08:42 Like I was a really big fan of SZA's last record,
08:45 kind of mixing indie elements with R&B
08:48 and kind of creating like sensitive soundscapes.
08:51 So a little bit of everything, always.
08:53 Yeah, always.
08:54 - Lovely, well, thank you so much.
08:56 We're so excited to see your book of poetry coming out soon.
08:58 - Thank you.
08:59 - And thank you for taking the time.
09:00 - 100%, thanks for having me.
09:01 - Thank you.
09:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]