On first listen, 'Ambiguous Desire' does feel like a screeching handbrake turn from the alt-pop and indie-rock inspired sounds of her previous records. Opener 'Blue Disco' pulsates with an addictive synth-pop backdrop, while '2SIDED' is a deep-house anthem so huge it's hard to believe that this is the same artist who released 'Black Dog' a mere six years ago.

Replay it, though, and Arlo's past is peppered across every beat, every note, every word of this record.

'Get Go', a song that Arlo says was designed to follow a similar path to 'Collapsed in Sunbeams'' 'Caroline' – "it's rooted in that story of the scene that you're witnessing with a chorus that you can sing along to" – illuminates a sense of place and character with such depth that you could be stood alongside her outside a club in Brooklyn's Williamsburg.

More classic references to Arlo's lyrical sensitivity and feelings-first discography are clear to see in heartbreaking halfway point 'South Seconds', spacious second single 'Heaven', and the languid yet lyrically punchy 'Beams'.

"I think that the stories are always going to be at the heart of what my music's about," she explains, "which is why it feels, more so than an electronic or a dance record, like it is an Arlo Parks record.

"I was patient with it; I felt like I wanted to sculpt the marble a bit more. I had a notebook where I'd been collecting fragments of conversation and phrases and little ideas for songs. On 'Collapsed in Sunbeams', I wrote all the words that day in the studio, but this time I thought if I can say something in a way that feels more true or poignant, I'll wait a few months, and it will come."

For this record, Arlo gave herself the time to really understand what she wanted to say and how to say it. Which direction would give her the best way to explain these exact situations in the most truthful way?

In that time, which loosely began with the completion of closing track 'Floette' in 2023 and ended with her and producer Baird finishing '2SIDED' last year, she became more comfortable with electronica, going from following her intuitions to carving out her own niche within the centre of a Venn diagram between dance and alternative music.

She says: "I really had time to play, to experiment and to get to the core of what it would mean to make a record that felt unobserved and just for me. I wanted to go back to the energy of being in my room at 15, knowing that no one would hear it – being in this echo chamber of my own dreams and ideas."

A formative anecdote from her time making this record, whether that's what she knew she was doing at the time or not, took the form of a tale about guitarist and super producer Blake Mills. The story allowed her to think about making music in a more intimate, honest and raw way, all of which burn brightly at the heart of 'Ambiguous Desire'.

"Someone was telling me that Blake Mills was approaching his record by being like, 'I wanted to make something that really mattered to me and then just bury it in the ground'. I loved that notion. I wanted to create something that I would listen to and that also still felt generous to the fans.

"I embraced spontaneity a lot more, just being out in the world and living and absorbing. It meant that I was able to translate that approach to the way that I was living and then back into the way that I was making music."

In this way, the record became a living, breathing organism which changed across the course of its two-year journey to completion. Initial sounds and ideas of songs that were thought finished could always be embellished, with the addition of conversations with friends sprinkling even more human connection into what can be a robotic, automated genre.

"I think those moments actually kind of came a little bit after the fact," Arlo recalls. "Like 'Jetta', for example, was a night that I had in New York and a bunch of my friends were in an Uber trying to figure out the aux chord. I was like, 'Okay, wait, I want to film this moment', because it was a bunch of friends who never really get to spend time together.

"I saw that video, and I had to have it because it's playful and it places it. All the voices on the record are friends of mine, all are from nights that I've had; I just wanted to put as much of that into the music as possible, because I feel like when you do hear that, it feels really lived in. You feel connected to the person and like they're bearing a part of themselves."

While small tweaks were made as, in Arlo's words, "life was accumulating", the mission statement of the whole project was to make the most of space, to keep the essentials in and cut the fat.

Where tracks like 'Devotion' on 'My Soft Machine' soared because of the use of thrashing guitars and crashing drums, 'Ambiguous Desire''s often understated approach in fact works just as well to let the album flow, to move, to hit you the hardest when you're not expecting it.

"The minimalism was intentional. I'm thinking about some of the early-2000s or mid-2000s stuff that I loved – Portishead, Joy Orbison, James Blake – and there was always this space, and it meant that when the elements do arrive, then it feels like it really moves the song. But there's also this sense of richness and fullness without there being too much sonic clutter."

Only keeping the vital elements allowed each song to have defined, sharp edges that live alongside the experiences that inspired the songs while simultaneously adding to the blurred edges and fluid boundaries of the album itself. The details of life can't ever be summed up in a nice little package tied with a bow, and that became even clearer to Arlo when it came to landing on the album title.

"I'd written down this phrase, 'desire is an engine', because I realised that so much of what was driving my sense of aliveness was this notion of like, 'What do we want? Who do we want? Where do we want to be? Who do we need to forgive?'

"There is this sense of yearning and wanting as this propulsive thing; the record itself searches feelings that are difficult to pin down and feel quite ambiguous. Whether that's chemistry or serendipity, a moment that feels full circle of like déjà vu, it's these feelings that exist in this limbo and are hard to put into words. Those two things collided in a way that I feel really summed up the essence of the album."

The album is, equally, full of expressions that are easy to define. There is a sense that the artist behind this work is brimming with pride, gratitude, and adulation for being able to express themselves in this new way, without fear of this bold new frontier. Even in the moments of vulnerability – the sample of voice note at the end of 'South Seconds' that longs for friends gone by, or the unravelling of mental health crises in 'Beams' – it is unarguable that this is the most assured version of Arlo Parks we have seen so far.

"I feel the most confident in myself and the happiest in myself that I've ever been," she smiles. "[The album] felt like a moment of transition, growing roots and solidifying myself and feeling a lot of purpose through what I was making.

"I was really in touch with why I started making music in the first place, which was a really beautiful position to be in. There was definitely this sense of arrival. It's a record I want you to lose yourself in and find yourself in; that sense of release, but then coming back to yourself."

With little more than a month to go until this album is taken from Arlo's hands and set free into the world, she has her eye on what the future might hold in a post-'Ambiguous Desire' landscape.

"I want this record to be the one that solidifies me as a career artist. There's always been this thing in my mind that I'll feel a sense of deep success if I'm able to do this for the rest of my life, and I hope that this contributes to that.

"I just want to keep doing the things that matter. To show up as a friend, a partner, a collaborator, to live a full life and keep shouting about the things that I love."

In ten years' time, when we look back at the music that defined the 2020s and the artists who made it special, there's no doubting that Arlo Parks will be on that list. 'Ambiguous Desire' isn't a radical reinvention; it is one of the world's finest talents shaping into her true form. ■

Taken from the April 2026 issue of Dork. Arlo Parks' album 'Ambiguous Desire' is out 3rd April.