Arlo Parks has shared “Impurities,” the second single off her forthcoming My Soft Machine. The full-length drops on May 26th via Transgressive Records. The track is accompanied by a video directed by Jak Payne. The single was a collaboration between Arlo, Romil Hemnani from Brockhampton and Carter Lang (SZA) and was inspired by nights listening to The Beatles and SZA. The album was recorded between London and Los Angeles, with the producers Paul Epworth, Ariel Rechtshaid, Romil Hemnani (Brockhampton), Frank Ocean-collaborator Buddy Ross and Carter Lang (SZA) – as well as some self-production from Arlo herself.

Arlo Parks shares about the meaning behind “Impurities,” “This is a song about community… being around people who make you feel like your inner ugliness and failures and mistakes don’t matter, who lift you up and make you laugh, who make you feel good and clean.”

Arlo will embark on a run of headline tour dates beginning with a BBC 6 Music Festival headline performance in Manchester on March 26th as well as dates in Japan and South Korea this Summer. She’ll then head out across the UK and Europe for September, which includes a show at London’s Eventim Apollo. The tour follows Arlo’s performances alongside Harry Styles at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Billie Eilish at The O2 London, Florence & The Machine in Canada, and Clairo across her North American tour.

Arlo adds about the making of the video, “With this visualiser I really wanted to convey this atmospheric oscillation between solitude and companionship – I wanted to show how being around your people really does feel like coming home. When I was writing this song I had been thinking about Gus Van Sant a lot and how he captures people in all their fragility and beauty and ugliness – Jak was instrumental in creating/protecting that sense of softness.”

Parks shares about how the new album and album title came to fruition in this beautiful performance video noting: “The world/our view of it is peppered by the biggest things we experience – our traumas, upbringing, vulnerabilities almost like visual snow. This record is life through my lens, through my body – the mid 20s anxiety, the substance abuse of friends around me, the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating PTSD and grief and self sabotage and joy, moving through worlds with wonder and sensitivity- what it’s like to be trapped in this particular body. There is a quote from a Joanna Hogg film called The Souvenir, it’s an A24 semi-autobiographical film with Tilda Swinton – it recounts a young film student falling in love with an older, charismatic man then being drawn into his addiction – in an early scene he’s explaining why people watch films – ‘we don’t want to see life as it is played out we want to see life as it is experienced in this soft machine.’ So there we have it… My Soft Machine.”

Arlo Parks
My Soft Machine
Transgressive Records

Bruiseless
Impurities
Devotion
Blades
Purple Phase
Weightless
Pegasus ft. Phoebe Bridgers
Dog Rose
Puppy
I’m Sorry
Room (red wings)
Ghost

Arlo Parks 2023 Tour Dates:

3/26 – Manchester, UK @ BBC 6 Music Festival

7/5 – Tokyo, Japan @ Ebisu Garden Hall

7/6 – Osaka, Japan @ Umeda Club Quattro

7/8 – Seoul, South Korea @ Musinsa Garage

8/5 – Oxfordshire, UK @ Wilderness Festival

8/26 – Reading, UK @ Reading Festival

8/27 – Leeds, UK @ Leeds Festival

9/5 – Dublin, Ireland @ 3Olympia Theatre

9/14 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso

9/15 – Brussels, Belgium @ Ancienne Belgique

9/17 – Berlin, Germany @ Huxleys Neue Welt

9/19 – Milan, Italy @ Alcatraz

9/21 – Paris, France @ L’Olympia

9/28 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo

Pre-order My Soft Machine by Arlo Parks HERE