Concerts

Get comfortable with Arlo Parks in Boston with her ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’ tour

The artist, who turns 22 in August, plays Roadrunner on Sept. 14.

British singer-songwriter Arlo Parks comes to Boston this fall. Interview Magazine

By Madeleine Aitken

2 minutes to read

Arlo Parks, just on the precipice of her 22nd birthday, has achieved breakout attention for her first album “Collapsed in Sunbeams” and is embarking on a North American tour this fall that will bring her to Roadrunner in Boston on Sept. 14. 

The buzzy singer-songwriter from London is simultaneously reeling from her newfound fame and absolutely taking it in stride. In other words — she feels bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but in the coolest way possible. 

Her music gets attention, most often, for her lyrics. Her sound is in many ways synonymous with the bedroom pop scene — Claud, girl in red, Cosmo Pyke, perhaps most prominently Clairo in her “Immunity” era — but her lyrics differentiate her. 

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Full of references that range from Robert Smith to Sylvia Plath to “Twin Peaks,” Arlo Parks is evidently well-versed in pop culture. Back in 2019, when she had received critical acclaim for the first single she ever released, 2018’s “Cola,” but was also a student in the midst of taking her A Levels, she said she used references to “build up a visual world,” which she said she learned from reading a lot. Despite several other singles, two EPS, and most recently an LP, little has changed.

“In ‘Cola,’ I use references [and] vignettes to Gerard Way, Bacardi, and all of that. I guess it’s about building a complete world that people can immerse themselves in,” Arlo Parks told tmrw in 2019.

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Her early references were often literary from early on; the single “george” uses 19th century poet Lord (George) Byron’s personality to establish a lyrical narrative. And the title of her album, “Collapsed in Sunbeams,” comes from Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty.” 

“Collapsed in Sunbeams” establishes Arlo Parks as an artist who is much more aware of her sound and her lyrics than she was four years ago. Although sometimes that sound feels a bit repetitive (when listening to the album, it’s easy to miss when one song ends and another begins), it’s not unpleasant. 

The way her songs flow into each other, when combined with reassuring lyrics like “You’re not alone, like you think you are / We all have scars, I know it’s hard” (“Hope”), creates a listening experience that is perhaps best described as comfortable. Some songs are poppier than others, but even the more upbeat tracks feel like the kind of thing you could play from the couch while watching a thunderstorm. 

And even though her songs are fraught with feelings, sometimes as common as feeling unrequited love for a straight girl (“Eugene”) and sometimes as serious as ending a relationship for fear of homophobic reception (“Green Eyes”), they’re often comforting purely because they’re relatable. Amid a pandemic, hate crimes, gun violence, and the loss of bodily autonomy (to name a few), comfort might be just what we need.

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