Review: Arlo Parks at CHALK, Brighton

Back in 2021, 20-year-old Arlo Parks achieved what few artists ever manage with only her debut album: winning the Mercury Prize. ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’ was both a commercial and critical success, reaching number three in the UK charts and garnering universal praise for its vulnerable, genre-bending pop. The boom-bap folk of ‘Black Dog’ and the sapphic tragi-R&B of ‘Eugene’ proved her ability for diaristic bedroom pop that still makes you two-step through the tears.

This eventually landed Parks coveted support slots with Billie Eilish and Harry Styles, only three years after her debut show on the beach stage at Brighton’s Great Escape Festival. Three years after her sophomore release, My Soft Machine, Arlo Parks returns with the dancefloor-tinged Ambiguous Desire: a record borne from club experiences on both sides of the Atlantic at New York’s Modern Lovers and Bermondsey’s Venue MOT. It channels Robyn’s try-not-to-cry-in-the-club electro-pop with feathery vocals, in a similarly left-field turn to former tourmate Harry Styles’ recent aping of LCD Soundsystem.

With a brand new touring setup aiming to mimic her ‘bedroom-studio-to-stage,’ it makes sense why tonight has no support act. Parks is surrounded by a table of synthesisers and decks in her return to the city of her first show. This time, she headlines Chalk, midway through a run of intimate shows promoting Ambiguous Desire.

After a brief intro of sombre piano chords and voice notes that sound like they’re from a smoking area – one stating ‘people are really excited to dance’ – Parks starts her non- chronological run-through of the album. Opening the set with ‘Heaven’, her gentle vocals deliver ‘I wish I had the language/to tell you the way this feels’ over Maribou State-style
mid-tempo that only careens into dance with a gentle drop after the lyrics ‘when the dawn breaks.’

In a seamless transition, ‘Jetta’ delivers tonight’s pulse beneath Parks’ smooth vocals. Its breezy guitar builds toward a bass-driven afterglow, expanding the track’s recorded outro into a full-blown club moment, and giving the audience their first dance of the night.

‘Hello hello Brighton,’ Parks greets to rapturous cheers before launching into more album cuts; the crowd is already present and eager to dance. ‘Blue Disco’ begins with organ-like chords, mimicking a hung-up phone to echo the heartbroken refrain ‘I always knew.’ Next, ‘Senses’ blends persistent hi-hat rhythms with Parks’ sampled and looped ‘Is it better than nothing,’ alongside Sampha’s prerecorded vocals. ‘Watching Sampha figure out his verse in Hackney was a highlight of my career,’ Arlo beams.

‘A lot of people have asked me what this track means’, Arlo states as she introduces the emotive ‘What if I Say It.’ She uses an extended intro to encourage people to say what they feel and reach out if they need help. While she had danced through every track prior, Parks remains stationary—allowing the delicate catharsis of her minor chord boom-bap to resonate. Forming the most emotionally bruising moments of tonight, ‘Beams’ opening of distant church bells opens up to a tender admission of pain; this time of ‘feeling suicidal in Brazil.’ In a club setting, this embodies the sadness that comes only from a night out; the alcohol brings down the walls about how much you need these moments. Throughout, the bass shudders every surface before a resounding guitar solo from multi-instrumentalist Sam Harding swells a crescendo that feels like an emotional eruption paired with lyrics of ‘it’s smashing me up.’

With one more downtempo track, ‘Luck Of Life’ utilising similar samples to our intro, the smokers’ confessional is over and the dancing returns. As the set shifts back to a higher energy, ‘2sided’ picks up the pace, with the distinctive pulsating drum patterns returning. A
wave of carefree electronica hides lyrics of romantic clarity. The brief, practically an interlude, ‘South Seconds’ shifts the tempo down slightly, but doesn’t hang around long enough to create another downbeat moment when there are so many high-energy cuts left to be aired.

Seamlessly moving into the dance-heavy final third of tonight, Parks drops the only available on YouTube, ‘New Desire.’ A track about falling in love in New York, it opens with the sound of waves crashing, interspersed with voice notes of a woman, while a two-step drum pattern looms in the background before breaking into garage territory. This sets a high-tempo, energised demand for movement in the home stretch: Parks is determined to get a room full of people young enough to have been sitting their GCSEs when her debut dropped dancing. ‘Get Go’ is pulsating with breakbeat drums and launch-padded bass, masking painfully real lyrics about letting go of someone while shuffling through. This is mixed effortlessly into ‘Nightswimming’, continuing the late-night 2-step with pounding precision, even if its lyrical buildup of ‘Just a moment in time’ never quite breaks into the glitchy drop it flirts with.

Humbled, the soft-spoken Parks announces, ‘Thank you so much for being here to celebrate this album… I can tell you’re really present and dancing.’ The night ends with ‘Floette,’ the album’s closer, which shifts from muted drums to 2-step by the chorus, with Parks’ vocal adlibs prompting one last dance.

While no early cuts are offered up — ‘Black Dog’ would’ve been a great inclusion to the slower moments — tonight showcases an album built in and for the small hours of the rave. It lives in moments where the DJ is playing downtempo as the night winds to a close, while you’re feeling more love than ever for your mates. It is built for rooms like this, for throwing your arms around friends as you stumble out of Chalk and onto the beach. The delicacy of her vocals throughout tonight parallels Pink Pantheress, while her new foray into dance offers the other side of the coin: fragility rather than playfulness. If her autumn shows have the same fluidity as tonight, possibly adapting earlier cuts for the dancefloor,
Arlo Parks could genuinely propel herself to even higher heights.

Words: Keir Shields