Two years ago, Arlo Parks fell in love with the night. The singer’s first two albums—2021’s Collapsed in Sunbeams and 2023’s My Soft Machine—filled up most of the singer-songwriter’s early twenties. After a muted critical response to My Soft Machine, Parks stayed busy by going to the club. She twirled under the K Bridge, felt her heart throb in the catacombs of BASEMENT, and watched hipsters smoke cigarettes outside Nowadays. She did the same in London, immersing herself in the company of dance music she had rarely played before. It was from these late nights and blurred mornings that Parks’ third record emerged. Brought to life alongside Brockhampton producer Baird in a New York City Loft, Ambiguous Desire combines her signature honeyed voice with slick electronic beats akin to late nights beneath heady lighting. It is a daring move forward for Parks, but, while technically impeccable, at times it seems to sink under the weight of its own production.
Parks taking up residency at the club makes for a distinct, textural tableau. On “Get Go,” a forward-pulsing beat and lyrics about finding an old acquaintance to grind on at the club, is somewhat belied by Parks’ delicate soprano. The combination makes for a bit of a snake-charmer effect: one feels they’re being pulled along by the tide of the song’s soft thrum. On “Senses,” featuring Sampha, the two buttery vocalists undergo a therapy session. “Hid myself in art and women / Needed things to reach towards,” Parks hushes, somewhat overpowered by Sampha’s hypnotic, instructive verse: “The clarity lies in the direction of pain.”
Clarity, though, is a triumph for Parks. A poet once drawn to balletic similes and overwrought descriptions, her lyrics on Ambiguous Desire are incisive and cutting. A cast of peripheral characters drawn with care and intention give the album its unique textural feel—Maria has sequins on her jeans; she and a stranger sober up on a staircase while looking at the ethereal portraits of Harley Weir; Joey drinks a furtive beer as he DJs the party. Sweetly poetic couplets—“In the guts of New York / With your eyes changing colour”; “The moonlight cuts through white / My friends are all inside”—remind the listener of Parks’ writerly prowess without rubbing their nose in it. Ambiguous Desire may feature one too many phone-message interludes, but the album is an accomplished set piece, anchored firmly in space and time. It’s an impressive feat, especially given how much of the record focuses on Parks’ own emotional state.
Ambiguous Desire flip-flops with abandon between the excitements of nightlife and the harsh realities of the half-sober mind, mirroring the emotional rollercoaster of a reluctant night out. Her moods roll seamlessly from depressive to exuberant to horny: “South Seconds,” a simmering, minimalist centerpiece on the fretting of a new love, tumbles into “Nightswimming,” a blurry, hormonal dance song about a late-night hookup, which crescendos into one of the album’s more bona fide party tracks, “2SIDED.” “You know how I feel / Tell me it’s two sided,” Parks purrs as sharp, synthy beats push in on the scene’s tension. She is, at heart, an evocative singer-songwriter. It’s hard to imagine her coming out with a true carefree dance album, one without lyrics like “I was suicidal in Brazil” or “I know I said I’d be okay / But you’re smashing me up.” Both of the aforementioned lines are from the lucid, glossy “Beams,” an album standout which Parks settles comfortably into, with a well-aged version of her signature sound in hand.
Parks is at her best when she strips it down, relying less on heady beats that drown her voice out and more on aromatic lyrics and bright vocal turns. Despite what the press releases may claim, Ambiguous Desire isn’t a club album—it’s unfolding at the afters, as the sun shines rudely through drawn blinds and you’re forced to reckon with the mascara-smudged faces of your 3 a.m. compatriots. It seems clear, though, as the music cruises toward a tidy end and Parks croons, “making me feel like I’m 14, letting the world happen to me,” that she’ll be right back at it tonight. [Transgressive]
Miranda Wollen is a staff writer at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her @mirandakwollen or email her.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.