theartsdesk’s Thomas H Green has lately been noting a “mellow production flatness” in modern pop and he’s really nailed a ubiquitous tendency there. The pendulum has definitely swung a long way back from the “loudness wars” of the era that trap and EDM crashed in and everything was amped up and ramped up as if to fight for attention in a crowded mall. One might trace the global counter tendency back to the chillwave of the Noughties, and its mainstreaming to the breakthrough of Tame Impala a decade ago, ushering in era where (brat being the exception that proves the rule) everyone from SZA to Harry Styles to Billie Eilish uses a restrained, polite sound palette even for huge hits.
You might, too, hold up Arlo Parks as a figurehead for this. The West Londoner has always prioritised softness, in lyrics and sound, and even though her third album prominently incorporates club rhythms, if you were to hear it on little speakers in a cafe it could very easily drift by alongside the other tasteful pop du jour. But AP has done something quite special on this record. Turn it up, get it on the good speakers or headphones, and suddenly it’s a different beast – because it has really phenomenal BASS. The rhythms of UK garage, breakbeat, street soul and such like that adorn her basically indie-style songwriting and delivery aren’t just affectations: she’s worked out how to adopt the real, potent heft of UK soundsystem culture into even delicate songs.
It’s also tied up with a real sense of Parks enjoying success and growing up. There’s still plenty of her kitchen-sink poetry of outsiderdom and forlorn love – but the sense of bruised but still potent hope that always counterbalanced that is now grown into a real passion for life’s possibilities. “Heaven” is an ode to throwing oneself into a party, the heavy groove that follows each chorus an incredible evocation of the moment the dancefloor absorbs you completely. “Jetta” is a great capturing of butterflies-in-the-stomach sensual infatuation.
The arrival of Sampha – perhaps the great trailblazer for Black British artists in melting down boundaries between dance, soul, indie, electronica and pop in pursuit of individualist vision – on “Senses” makes absolute sense. The production throughout is phenomenal, and always utterly integrated into Parks’s song structure. If there’s one fault it’s that the pace is too steady in the second half, and perhaps a little more dynamics here would lift the full album experience – but as the closer, the weightless, dreamlike small-hours self-examination of “Floette’ rounds things off, that quibble is quickly forgotten. Overall an extraordinary artistic maturing, and a sonic and emotional space to luxuriate in.
Listen to "Beams":
