Arlo Parks writes songs that can sound like overheard confidences: quiet conversations taking place just off the main dancefloor. On her third album she keeps that instinct intact while dressing the music in club textures, from garage rhythms to hazy breakbeats and the faint glow of late-night electronica. The result is intriguing, occasionally moving, and sometimes bordering on electrifying.
Get Go is among the sharpest moments here. Built around restless percussion and flickering synths, it follows a friend attempting to dance away heartbreak while spotting her ex across the room. Parks captures that awkward, suspended moment between longing and self-preservation with characteristic precision. The production pulses with club energy, but the emotional centre remains inward-looking.
Senses, a duet with Sampha, offers the album’s most affecting exchange. Their voices, delicate and slightly ghostlike, weave around each other as they circle themes of insecurity and self-doubt.
Sampha’s closing lines add depth and gravity, turning the track into something closer to a quiet therapy session than a pop collaboration.
The most revealing track is probably Beams, which combines rattly 1990s trip hop drums with epic ballad chords. It could probably be one of 2026’s best if allowed to lift off, but Parks’ gossamer touch pulls this back, and by the end of the track you are left wondering if anything really happened there. Throughout, Parks’ voice remains lovely — distinctive, soft, feather-light and reassuring — yet it also tends to wash over you in a slightly soporific way.
‘Ambiguous Desire’ borrows the language of rave culture, the beats, the textures, the sense of nocturnal possibility, but isn’t always down to fully inhabit its chaos. Everything remains slightly studied, slightly restrained, leading to work that is thoughtful, emotionally literate, and at times quietly beautiful. You occasionally find yourself wishing someone would turn the lights down further, the bass up louder, and let the night get a little messier, but that might have to be for another day.
Arlo Parks Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat April 11 2026 - OXFORD O2 Academy Oxford
Sun April 12 2026 - SOUTHAMPTON 1865
Sat October 17 2026 - DUBLIN Ambassador Theatre
Tue October 20 2026 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
Sat October 24 2026 - GLASGOW Old Fruit Market
Sun October 25 2026 - BRISTOL Prospect Building - Complex
Mon October 26 2026 - MANCHESTER Albert Hall
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