‘I’ve never had those deep chats in the smoking area’: Arlo Parks on embracing late-night life with her fun new album | Arlo Parks

ShUntil just a few years ago, Arlo Parks had never been to a club. The lack of a party phase makes sense when you consider that while most of her friends were heading off to college at 18, Parks was busy landing a record deal, releasing her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, just months after her twentieth birthday. “It’s something I’ve almost never had time to think about,” she says, speaking from Los Angeles, where she has lived since 2022 and where she feels at home. (This morning actually consisted of working out and walking in the 28-degree sun that was as bright as her neon red hair.) “But I definitely came to the conclusion that I had missed it — I didn’t really have time to be silly and have crazy, deep conversations in the smoking area. To be in an unknown space and feel like you’re a part of it all.”

Now 25, she’s more than made up for lost time with her third album, Ambigious Desire, a paean to the night, which fuses elements of house, techno, UK garage and more with Parks’ light, heavenly vocals. While she hasn’t given up on guitars completely, it’s still a far cry from where we were when we first met Parks, born Anaïs Marinho, in 2018. Fresh out of sixth grade, where she honed her craft via GarageBand, her playing is a confessional, clear-eyed strain of alternative pop, with influences ranging from Nick Cave to Erykah Badu. It wasn’t long until she signed with an agent and landed the aforementioned recording deal with Transgressive, fueled by the impudence of youth rather than any casual relationships. While her songs were often filled with perfectly orchestrated cultural callbacks (“You do your eyes like Robert Smith,” she exclaimed in Black Dog), she never shied away from singing about mental health, romantic rejection, or drug use. “It’s unbecoming of a 51-year-old to cry on a train over a song but here I am,” says one of the top comments on a YouTube video for her early single “Eugene.”

Parks was quickly dubbed the voice of a generation and fans poured their hearts out to her online; In previous interviews, she’s mentioned how much this weighs on her, and the need to not feel personally responsible for every fan who sends a direct message. “Over time, it’s become easier to draw good out of it — it’s a huge compliment because what I offer touches people on that level, but still maintains a sense of independence,” she says. Gaining acclaim during the pandemic (she received the Mercury Prize shortly after lockdown ended for the last time in 2021) seems nothing less than surreal: “I remember feeling like it was just a dream — I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m living this?!’” she says of Mercury. Then 2022 saw her get back into it, in full force, supporting the likes of Harry Styles and Billie Eilish, leading to a debilitating and much-documented period of burnout in 2022.

By 2023, she returned with another album, the rock album My Soft Machine, which received less acclaim but still cracked the top ten. Parks certainly doesn’t condemn this album to the dustbin of UK indie music history, but he does make it clear that it was made in “quick moments, between tours and other things.” This time, she says: “I really had to go away and create this isolated bubble with my boyfriend [and producer] Byrd.” The duo spent two years going to clubs, rummaging through crates (at least one UK pirate radio sample made it onto the album) and making hundreds of new songs, a small portion of which ended up on “Mysterious Desire” (although apparently there might be enough material for a deluxe edition or two).

She says it wasn’t a conscious decision to turn to dance music, but rather a byproduct of the life she was living in the US, where she spent most of the past two years moving between the West and East coasts. “I was falling in love with someone,” she says, sounding excited (her previous relationship with singer Asheneko ended in 2024), “and I was hanging out with her friends and some of my friends too in New York.” She listed the clubs she frequented, including the tech-focused Basement Club and Nowadays, both in Queens, known for their marathon 24-hour parties. And in case it wasn’t obvious from those early days when Parks was name-checking everyone from MF Doom to Sylvia Plath in interviews, she’s a student of the greats. That meant studying the history of New York nightlife, “at Paradise Garage, The Loft, and Studio 54. All of that was very inspiring,” she adds.

I also read Raving by writer and academic Mackenzie Wark, who wrote about “the trip to the club – packing your bag, getting an Uber with your friends. There’s something about that heightened excitement of being on the way somewhere with people and feeling safe enough to let yourself go.” However, she’s really keen to stress that it wasn’t so much about channeling certain influences as it was about just living her life. “My intention for those few years was: I just need to live, I just need to be better at being spontaneous,” she says, the animation in her voice reaching a crescendo. Parks is talkative and engaging, but so clearly professional and focused that it’s easy to forget that she’s only in her mid-twenties. “To be honest, my life has been very little slices, my whole adult life – you’re on tour and you’re on stage at a certain time and then the bus is called at a certain time. There’s not a lot of space in between to just be. I wanted to say yes to more things and have more fun and be more free.”

It’s a feeling that comes through strongly throughout the album – not least in Guetta, who has a quality of euphoria reminiscent of partying all night and cheerfully welcoming the sunshine rather than shyly turning it away. “I learned about this type of music called morning music, which is what DJs play as a bridge for people who have been dancing all night, to kind of lighten up and then get back into the daytime again,” she says. Elsewhere, Paradise – complete with a big drop – perfectly captures the feeling of euphoria (perhaps even just in life) with the break of the day. She was inspired by hearing her friend Kelly Lee Owens play a frenetic Gigamosh remix of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place.” “I remember going past that moment and thinking to myself, ‘This is the best day of my life!’”

Interestingly, she declares that she has “no desire to turn Heaven into an Arlo Parks song.” What does that mean exactly? “Rejecting what I did in the past wasn’t very intentional,” she explains. “It was just a matter of saying: OK, how am I now? Ignoring the past and people’s perceptions of me – who am I now?”

While much of the album grew out of Parks and Byrd working in close quarters, there was also room for other collaborators, including Sampha, who appears on Senses – the duo melding in angelic, happy harmonies even as they sing a song with the line “I can’t find no love for myself.” “I’m very happy about that,” Parks says with a smile. “He and Dave Hynes have this sense of black British music that’s in this almost genreless space – they’ve always been two of my biggest inspirations. And his sound is old and timeless – it’s a woodwind or something, it’s very special.”

If it sounds like something of an artistic repositioning, there’s still a lot here that’s Arlo Parks-like, not least its unapologetic weirdness, which feels more like an exploration of electronic music. “Historically, clubs have provided this haven for people who feel like outsiders or outsiders for whatever reason, to come together and find a sense of peace and connection,” she says. “And I think it’s always been a big part of the language of the gay community to connect with the body in that way and share music and share space.”

Of course, grappling with the history of queer nightlife in a city like New York also means confronting the fact that much of it has been lost — bulldozed physically, but also not always included in oral history. “Honestly, it’s really heartbreaking,” Parks says, sounding casual. “A lot of these stories have been lost… There are not many pictures around or we only get fragments of the stories. [But] There are always DIY parties popping up in non-standard spaces. And I like to think that people in this grassroots way are continuing the spirit of those spaces.

Beyond the pain, the album embraces the joy of queer desire and the thrill of hoping your feelings will be rewarded. Nowhere is this more evident than on the drum-machine-heavy single 2SIDED, which begins with the lyrics “I’ve been waiting for this moment all night / Yeah, I made it just for you.” It’s steamy, but it also has the classic candor of Arlo Parks, the 18-year-old who was as inspired by Elliot Smith as she was by Zadie Smith. “It’s very much about longing, the feeling when there’s something simmering with someone, and no one wants to be the person who gives themselves and puts their heart on the line first and says, ‘Do you feel the same way I do?’ She says. “The way you build the song, I wanted it to feel like the words are rising up your throat — like building courage, and then the chorus is unapologetic, almost a release of emotion.”

After spending nearly an hour talking about club culture, via Madonna (who is inspired by Madge’s crossover era, and how she’s taking to the clubs with her latest record) and Roland Barthes (whose ideas about the democratization of space can be clearly seen in nightclubs around the world, where booths are often on the same level as punters), Parks takes a thoughtful pause. “I think it’s really important for people to understand that this isn’t the kind of fashion I wear — I don’t feel like a tourist in this world; I’ve been in it and I’m really embodying it.”

She’s also keen to stress that even if she no longer feels the same intensity of anti-social obligation, her fans are still an important part of what she does. “I think it’s more important than ever to do good where you can, and it’s never lost on me that a lot of my work and my job is giving people hope or a little bit of freedom or space to be that. It’s important to lean into that, and realize how lucky I am to do what I do.” All this, and I made them something to dance to all night long too. What more could their hearts desire?

Mysterious desire is released via Transgressive on April 3.