Arlo Parks: ‘I wanted to approach this record almost as if I were writing a book’

After being long-listed in the BBC Sound of 2020 poll, the singer-songwriter from Hammersmith, west London won the One To Watch prize at the AIM Independent Music Awards and was hailed as “the voice of a generation”.

If it’s not a label the 20-year-old would choose for herself, nonetheless her quiet self-possession seems likely to inspire many others.

“I mean with that thing, I never feel like I’m speaking for anybody,” she says. “A generation is just an age bracket, there are so many individuals with so many different experiences.

“It’s definitely validating and it makes me feel happy that people are enjoying my work and are excited to hear it, but especially when I was making the album, I tried to focus on making art that felt good to me. I tried to trust myself rather than wondering about what people might like to hear.”

Collapsed in Sunbeams opens with a poem and elsewhere Parks has revealed strong literary leanings with references to such writers as Sylvia Plath and Haruki Murakami. “I’ve always been a bookworm,” she says. “I started writing short stories when I was seven or eight, and I spent a lot of my time reading.

“One of my favourite authors is Zadie Smith and in this album especially I tried to incorporate that kind of sensory writing into mine. That’s why I focus on very small, specific details, whether it’s the tone of somebody’s jumper or a physical attribute or the way they look at somebody, those very intently specific details are what makes a picture feel whole.

“What I love about books is they create this holistic world that you can dive into, and I wanted to approach this record almost as if I were writing a book or a collection of short stories or even maybe a film.”

By the age of 14 Parks had started to teach herself to play guitar and create beats on GarageBand. “I’d been inspired through hearing King Krule’s first album and listening to Frank Ocean and Patti Smith,” she says. “I was just finding my feet and experimenting, and playing a few shows here and there. It was very much a private exercise.”

Her breakthrough came in 2018, when she released the single Cola, which amassed three million listens on Spotify and led to a deal with Transgressive Records, whose diverse roster has previously included Foals, Let’s Eat Grandma and Africa Express.

Her debut album was written over the course of the last year. She says he found it “empowering” to write about vulnerability and her own bisexuality. “I was just writing about the world through my lens. For me, every time I write a song about something that’s difficult or complicated and I feel like I’ve encapsulated the feelings well, there is a bit of a weight lifted off my shoulders,” she says.

“I always wanted this album to feel very intimate, I always wanted it to be about human things. I think part of being a human being is experiencing those moments of sadness or rejection, but I always wanted it to have some kind of hopeful light in general.”

A couple of her songs address the mental health crisis among young people. Parks says it’s something she has become acutely aware of during the pandemic.

“It’s worldwide, it transcends age brackets now,” she says. “As everybody is staying inside and separated from one another and they’re experiencing various kinds of crises, ideas like self-care are becoming more important than ever, making that active effort to take care of oneself and try enjoy it where you can because we’re definitely going through a difficult time.”

What comes across in Parks’ songs is a strong sense of empathy for others. “I think I’m somebody who is quite open and receptive and I’ve always felt like I carry quite a lot of empathy with me,” she reflects. “But I think being sensitive is definitely a double-edged sword because you take on a lot of that pain sometimes, so I think it’s important to set boundaries in that way, but it also makes you write about it.”

Parks is one of four ambassadors for Independent Venue Week, which runs until January 31.

She says: “When you’re playing your first shows at 200-capacity venues all of them are independent, so when people are building up their platform as artists, finding their feet as performers, these venues are the ones that welcome them with open arms and I feel that’s why it’s so important to support them and protect them, because without independent venues there will be no emerging artists. That’s why I’d like anyone who is a fan of new talent to support these venues.”

Collapsed in Sunbeams is out today. Arlo Parks is scheduled to play at the Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds on May 26 – check venue for details. www.arloparksofficial.com