Arlo Parks announces her highly-anticipated sophomore release, My Soft Machine, is set to arrive on May 26.
“This record is life through my lens, through my body,” Parks said of the album in a statement. “The mid-20s anxiety, the substance abuse of friends around me, the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating PTSD and grief and self sabotage and joy, moving through worlds with wonder and sensitivity — what it’s like to be trapped in this particular body.”
Videos by American Songwriter
Along with the news comes the album’s lead single, “Weightless.” Check it out below.
Parks made her debut with the 2021 LP, Collapsed in Sunbeams, an album that received critical acclaim and set the artist on her path. Parks previously spoke of her passion for music with American Songwriter.
“You can put on a song and feel nourished, refreshed or transported,” she said. “I love the fact of how healing it is.”
Last September, the artist found herself in need of some of that healing. She was forced to cut her U.S. tour short after mental health struggles while abroad left her in “a debilitating place.”
“I’ve been on the road on and off for the last 18 months, filling every spare second in between and working myself to the bone,” Parks wrote in a message to fans on Twitter. “The people around me started to get worried but I was anxious to deliver and afraid to disappoint my fans and myself. I pushed myself unhealthily, further and harder than I should’ve.”
The “Green Eyes” singer continued to explain how she found herself in a “very dark place, exhausted and dangerously low.”
“I don’t take decisions like this lightly but I am broken and I really need to step out, go home and take care of myself,” she added in the tweet. “I will do everything I can to make this up to you – for now you can get refunds at your point of purchase. I’m forever thankful to everyone who continues to show up for me, what a dream to have fans like you guys – I’ll be back – love AP.”
Photo by Josh Brasted/WireImage