The Collapsed In Sunbeams Tour 2021
The Collapsed In Sunbeams Tour 2021
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This event is 21 and over.
$16.00 – General Admission (Advance)
$18.00 – General Admission (Door)
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Arlo Parks
In Arlo Parks’s world, words are as useful as photographs. Luscious, expressive vignettes pepper the poetic lyrics in her sweet, ruminative indie pop songs. Born Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho, the 20-year-old from West London – who burst onto the scene with 2018’s “Cola” – uses poetry as her songwriting compass, weaving vivid imagery and sensory touches throughout the stirring, honest stories that make up her already-rich body of work. “I was really interested in the idea of delving into a hyper-specific moment and making it feel universal, making it something that people could connect to,” Arlo says about drawing from poetry in her approach.
A sensitive child, Arlo grew up in a peaceful part of town. “There wasn’t that much to do, and I was a pretty happy kid, I was very much in my own little world,” she explains, describing spending her free time exploring creative ways to express her emotions. “Because I was feeling a lot, I started writing quite young,” she says, referencing poets Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver and Pat Parker and more who inspired her to write. “It’s that cinematic quality that can make you feel like you’re plunged into someone’s subjectivity,” she adds about poetry’s impact. Arlo recalls a gift from her uncle—a record collection that included classics from Sade, Earth Wind & Fire, and Bob Dylan—and choir practice as fundamentals to her musical side. Like most kids her age, she grew up digging around on YouTube for music, discovering Portishead, Odd Future, Elliott Smith, Joni Mitchell, King Krule and an eclectic range of music to root herself in.
When she was 14, Arlo downloaded Garageband and started making beats to rhyme her poetry to, which over time naturally morphed into singing and the dulce soprano that sets her apart in today’s music climate. In 2017, she took a chance and submitted her recordings to BBC Introducing, which led to her first interview, management and recording contract. In the summer of 2018, Arlo dove into her first EP, collaborating with producer Gianluca Buccellati on 2019’s acclaimed Super Sad Generation. “We were in an Airbnb in London, just writing, taking photos, and going for walks,” Arlo remembers – they ended up writing the songs in just 24 hours. Arlo’s Sophie EP quickly followed, alongside performances at Glastonbury and Latitude Festivals and supporting slots on tour with Jordan Rakei and Loyle Carner. A place on the BBC Sound Poll, and inclusion in Dazed’s 100 List, followed in 2020 – beginning a truly exceptional year for Arlo. Landing covers with NME and Evening Standard, winning the AIM One to Watch and BBC Introducing Artist Of The Year Awards, making her debut appearances on COLORS and Later…. with Jools Holland, all whilst gaining champions in Phoebe Bridgers, Billie Eilish, Florence Welch, Lily Allen, Michaela Coel and Michelle Obama.
Arlo’s creative process has continued to develop naturally, and she’s taken the same thoughtful approach for her forthcoming debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, featuring the breakthrough singles “Black Dog”, “Hurt” and “Green Eyes” – which also featured vocals from friend, Clairo. While in quarantine, Arlo wrote and recorded the album’s twelve songs – collaborating again with Gianuca, but also introducing Paul Epworth (Adele, Glass Animals) and David Wrench (Frank Ocean, Sampha) – whilst drawing from the likes of Ram Dass to DJ Rashad and DJ Shadow to The Beatles to experiment with sound. “I was reading through a lot of my old journals and thinking about experiences that shaped and affected me during my adolescent years,” Arlo says about songs that unpack vulnerability, suffering and love. “I wanted to create something that still had the kind of intimacy of what I’d released before, but I did want to expand my sonic palette,” she adds. With these cues, she learned to relax and improvise, especially with playing the guitar this year: “When you’re improvising, you don’t have the time to overthink.” She studied the works of photographers like Ren Hang and Nan Goldin, and watched films by David Lynch and Studio Ghibli to strengthen the richness of her words. “I want the experience of listening to my songs to feel like you’re looking down the lens of a camera,” she says about the importance of distilling moments in her music.
“A lot of the reason why I write is to process difficult situations and delve into trauma,” Arlo says. And while music is her current outlet, Arlo has big plans for where she expects writing to take her. She’s working on a poetry collection and planning to write a novel. “I’m excited to go into different kinds of mediums, whether that’s directing or curating or acting,” she adds. “I want to have breadth in what I do. I’m interested in art as a whole.” A young mind well beyond her years, Arlo’s otherworldly storytelling talent and keen emotional intelligence is sure to turn her artistic dreams to reality.
MICHELLE
Through sharing the sacred space of meals and the secret space of dreams, MICHELLE presents a picture of a band enthralled by their craft, a group capable of melding six unique perspectives and backgrounds into one cohesive, impressive collection. Coming in January 2022, AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS is the culmination of what it means for six friends and collaborators to continuously reimagine their world on 14 succinct tracks.
Born-and-bred New Yorkers, MICHELLE formed in 2018 around their celebrated debut album HEATWAVE. The band is comprised of Sofia D’Angelo, Julian Kaufman, Charlie Kilgore, Layla Ku, Emma Lee and Jamee Lockard. On their forthcoming record, the predominantly POC and queer collective are closer than ever before as they continue to mix and match the writing and production groups amongst the six of them. Jamee notes, “We’ve learned how to maximize everyone’s strengths by listening to each other.”
The hallmarks of MICHELLE’s music—layered vocal harmonies, analog synthesizers, vibrant percussion, smoldering hooks—dominate the sonic landscape of the album. Songs hop across genres, from funky R&B to bedroom slow jams to amped-up beat-heavy anthems and more. And the songwriting on AFTER DINNER has been elevated as there is a depth and prowess at work that builds off the band’s early songs, something they admit was learned by reflecting and allowing for artistic growth.
Charlie notes, “If HEATWAVE was a perfect image of every member of MICHELLE as a person at the end of their youth, this album really feels like a transition to adulthood, going from kids to…non-kids.”
AFTER DINNER sets a high standard from the get-go. “SYNCOPATE” is a straight-up, feel-good summertime jam with a two-step backbeat and jangly guitar strums, and clocking in at just under two minutes, it’s perhaps the tightest package the group has made to date. The band shares, “The song at its core is about desire. Communicating your desire can feel vulnerable, so we wanted to have some fun with that and show our funky and seductive side.”
“POSE” pulses along at a highly danceable clip while synths steer the beat. Chilled melodies and dense harmonies run the emotional 6/8 slow-jam “MESS U MADE” while the vocalists trade lead lines and bemoan the frustrated, coming-of-age, “today is not your day” anthem. “EXPIRATION DATE” dwells in that classic bittersweet space of a relationship doomed by external forces at work, while the incendiary “LAYLA IN THE ROCKET” blasts off to burn up the speaker.
Charlie notes, “Being with each other allows us to do a lot of things we wouldn’t have the energy-ability-resources-courage-wherewithal to do solo. There isn’t really one kind of music that sounds like MICHELLE, and us being such a diverse group gives us total creative freedom to do whatever we want.”
Layla adds, “The beauty is that everybody’s individual aspirations are the group’s aspirations, in a sense, because MICHELLE is the culmination of the best of us as individuals.”
AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS is a snapshot of a band always adapting and evolving, jutting in and out of each other’s lives with this moment being their closest together yet.