On ‘Ambiguous Desire’, Arlo Parks steps out of the soft-lit indie cocoon that defined her early work and walks straight into the neon glow of underground nightlife. It’s a bold, necessary evolution, a record built on bass, sweat, and the strange clarity that arrives at 3 am when the lights strobe just right. Yet, beneath the club lights, she is still tracing the same emotional cartography she mapped on ‘My Soft Machine’: tenderness, queer love, mental health, and the ache of becoming. The tools have changed, but the heart remains unmistakably hers.
Opener ‘Blue Disco’ sets the tone with the mantra-like “I always knew I’d find you”, a line that feels both romantic and foreboding. ‘Jetta’ drifts between indie guitar riffs and a more nocturnal pulse, “living in fiction for tonight”, capturing love so surreal it barely feels tangible. Throughout the album, skittering drum patterns flicker like strobing club lights, giving each track a restless, late-night momentum. That tension between yearning and disorientation becomes the album's spine.
On ‘Get Go’, Parks leans fully into the British underground: thick bass, foggy synths, and a confessional “I don’t know what the hell I need”. It’s the sound of searching for yourself in someone else’s silhouette on the dance floor. ’Sense’, her collaboration with Sampha, deepens this introspection; she questions “what if I don’t love myself?”, a question that hovers over the album’s emotional prose.
Moments of transcendence break through the darkness. ‘Heaven’ is a rush of unexplainable love, tied to the famous London gay club, its angelic piano cutting through light throbs. ‘Beams’ confronts despair head-on: “I feel it all, nothing at all”, yet still reaches for the “sunset” that may carry someone through their darkest hour.
Across interludes like ‘South Seconds’ and ‘Luck of Life’, Parks uses phone-call snippets to ground the album in community, offering a gentle reminder that support can exist without pressure. Tracks like ‘What If I Say It?’ and ‘Floette’ wrestle with vulnerability, comparison, and the terrifying thrill of new love. The latter’s dreamlike pulse and final quickened drumbeats feel like a heart finally admitting what it wants.
Like ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’, the album unfolds with poetic fluidity, each track dissolving into the next, as if Parks is performing one long, continuous stanza. Inspired by New York and London nightlife and the magnetic pull of after-hours spaces, ‘Ambiguous Desire’ reframes dancing as both a coping mechanism and a revelation. Parks referenced that tracks on the project are about “yearning and tension”, about finding the courage to name desire. It also arrives in the shadow of criticism that her last album was too soft, a charge that never quite accounted for the nuance of her lyricism. This new record moves decisively away from those perceptions without abandoning the natural tone that defines them. Across these glowing soundscapes, she does exactly what she set out to, offering solace once again, just in a darker, bassier language.
Amy King
Image: 'Ambiguous Desire' Official Album Cover