A 19-year-old Londoner whom the BBC says “channels the malaise of a generation”…
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[5.50]
Thomas Inskeep: I dig Parks’s voice a lot, but this is way too stripped-down and minimalist. She improves with more/better production.
[3]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Arlo Parks is at her best when she opts for simple pleasures — the rolling beat and sticky bassline on “Cola,” the guitar chords peeking through the haze on “Paperbacks,” the druggy dance of “Romantic Garbage.” Her predilection for knowingly lyrical phrases is her downfall, rendered obnoxious when presented in awkward, mannered fashion — it reads as unearned self-satisfaction, even if it’s just the sound of a young singer-songwriter finding their voice. Such is the case with “Angel’s Song,” a song that grants primacy to lyrics and their over-labored delivery. Imagine: if the song were just the instrumentation it’d be innocuous, but with Parks it carries a self-serious tone.
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Kylo Nocom: “Angel’s Song” is just one of many unfortunate results of post-Frank Ocean songwriting: expositions for faceless people that rely on Gen Z cool without a narrative to build upon. The first verse is an Instagram caption disaster: “the afterglow of the ’60s” (screaming “vintage!” out into the void and saying nothing else), “getting high in the basement pretty” (Arlo won’t judge you for using drugs, but she’ll describe you with awkward phrasing as if you should know better!), “a heart full of blood and Courtney Love” (redundancy and a rock star name-drop, something she’s done before), a Lana song title reference, more shit talk. I don’t like being a dick about these kinds of songs, not when I know people close to me who write pure nostalgia bait lyrics in songs I adore, not when I value giving more credit to artists that are constantly accused of being inauthentic Spotify-bait. But I can’t accept what seems to be a cynical attempt to make a character out of somebody’s despair without extending any sympathy. You can’t drop “fuck, I love you” after the limpest description of suicidal ideation — it just amplifies how the line doesn’t register as desperation nor as sincere adoration. Generosity would give more leeway to how Arlo dares to not emote as fitting for the subject matter; I’ve already given my fair share to somebody who actually bothered to sound hurt. When the top comments describe reflection and contemplation, one wonders if they looked enough to find anything at all.
[2]
Iain Mew: In “Angel’s Song” Arlo Parks turns limitations into strengths in an unusual way. The fuzz and the acoustic loop are basic and detached from her performance. Helped by the strong Life is Strange vibes, the music doesn’t sound like something she’s together with, but like a soundtrack to a scene which sets a constant mood and isn’t otherwise interacting with her. That makes her words sound unadorned and intimate. In turn, their failure to cohere works because of that combined with where they eventually get to. She loves someone who wants to die, and in the face of that what could possibly be adequate? Sitting with the total inadequacy feels an honest and affecting response.
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Katherine St Asaph: Folk written, mercifully, to better reverberate in the grottos than the YouTube pre-rolls. Specifically, hypnotic loop that evokes Mazzy Star (if fucking “Lover” earns the comparison, then that one particular bit that arcs close to “All My Sisters” certainly does). Parks’s voice has a scratchy quality I’m sure will be written off as “indie girl voice” but well predates thinkpieces; it’s strikingly like acoustic Emiliana Torrini or Carina Round. Her songwriting voice has that early Laura Marling quality of setting lines like “fuck, I love you” and “heart full of blood and Courtney Love” to a staid acoustic arrangement. That’s a lot of comparisons, perhaps to be expected singer-songwriter still finding her voice; but I’d so much rather be reminded of specific people, rather than everyone and no one.
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Jonathan Bradley: Arlo Parks has tape fuzz and an acoustic guitar that wanders through its chord progression so carelessly it might not even know where it’s supposed to go. In her callow evocations, she sounds like previous BBC Sound Of shortlister SOAK (“You’ve got the pawn shop blues in this bitter city” is the right kind of adolescent purple), and in her barely present murmur, she reminds of the way early Laura Marling would threaten to turn spectral if the wind shifted too suddenly. “You’re my angel; fuck, I love you” is direct in the way the rest is not, but it is arresting more because the person she sings it to isn’t formed enough to justify the devotion. With the subject such a blank, Parks’s gaze is reflected back upon itself: hers is the plaintive void of the more lo-fi songs by Will Oldham or Jason Molina. It ends, but it can’t fall apart. “Angel’s Song” fades away.
[8]
Ian Mathers: So suffused and shot-through with the sad, deep knowledge that our love (no matter how real and how huge) can sometimes be insufficient or even immaterial in the face of others’ trauma that it’s almost hypnotic. We don’t know what “happens” in the “end,” if there is one. “You wanna jump off the roof” and “fuck I love you” circle around each other, neither able to answer the ache in its counterpart.
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Brad Shoup: The from-the-other-wall consideration and high school class angst combine for a quiet stasis. When Parks whisper-sings “fuck, I love you,” it feels like practice. The “doo doo doo” provides the barest hint of a melodic progression, but it feels like a placeholder. So does the “city/pretty” rhyme, which makes the earlier (and much more clever) “Sixties/pretty” pair feel like the flash that got Parks to pick up that guitar.
[5]
Alfred Soto: She sings this lament to a girl who doesn’t pay attention as if still afraid she might expose herself. It’s not clear whether the “you” whom she hopes won’t take her own life is herself: subject and object mesh with poignant slippage.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I write you now from my childhood home, and so my fondness for this piece of underwritten, sub-Sheeran singer-songwriter pop is stronger than it would be at any other time of the year. It’s achingly high school in its references to ’60s and ’90s cool, its understated compliment game (kind and cute!), and its casual references to wanting to die. The arrangement is just as amateurish (though less charming), sounding like a voice memo demo more than anything else. Parks’ vocal performance is the main thing that elevates “Angel’s Song”; regardless of anything else, she sounds fully committed to the song, in all of its sketchy details.
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