A friend sent me a text yesterday, “this girl is so sick”, followed by a Spotify link. “I’ll check it out after class”, was my reply. I taught my class, did a bunch of other shit, taught another class, went home, went on a late night burger run to Small Cheval, and then went to sleep. I totally forgot all about the text, and this girl from the UK who is still a teenager, and apparently very good at making songs.
After teaching my AM class today, I sat down at my desk to enter in some attendance and the general decompression required after teaching about music business fuckery for 3 hours. The text popped up again and I decided to hit the Spotify link – maybe listen in the background to Arlo Parks as I did things.
Maybe it’s because the weather in Chicago went from sunny and nearly 70 degrees to a chilling 37 and raining in the matter of 12 hours – but the music hit me. Perfectly. The music is Arlo Parks’ debut EP, Sad Generation. It’s 12 minutes of melodic and spacious records, with underpinning drums and a teenager’s take on love and loneliness – something that many teenagers simultaneously know a lot and nothing about it. Arlo has an effortless cool in her voice. She sings softly, almost as though she talking to a friend – or someone who used to be a friend, maybe someone she was hoping would stay more than that.
The title track sums up the project nicely, and the general thesis statement that Arlo makes about her age group – “We’re the Super Sad Generation, killing time and losing our patience.”
Listen below, and get hip to an emerging artist that I think you’ll be hearing a lot about very soon.
