Arlo Parks has been part of the 88Nine rotation since her earliest days, making her first appearance as part of Rhythm Lab Radio back in 2019. Our paths have continued to cross in the years that followed — right up to today, when we found out 88Nine will present her show at The Rave on Sept. 17.
Parks will take the stage almost exactly two years to the day of her last scheduled appearance in Milwaukee. That Pabst Theater date in September of 2022 was among several the U.K. artist canceled in a social-media post that said, in part, “I pushed myself unhealthily, further and harder than I should’ve. I find myself now in a very dark place, exhausted and dangerously low.”
Eighteen months of touring took its expected toll, something Parks addressed in an interview with The Face after regrouping enough to perform at the Iceland Airwaves festival in November of 2022.
“Touring can be beautiful and restorative as much as it can be spiritually and physically taxing,” she said. “Conversations with friends about the energy touring saps, and the headspace it can drive you into, has made me feel like something has to change in terms of the pacing of shows, mental health support and general pressure cooker culture around touring.
“My hope for the future is that we, as artists, find balance, that people are protected from burnout, that health is put first before all else. I think a gentler, more empathetic approach to artists and their limits would re-infuse touring with the joy it so naturally contains.”
In the time since then, she released the much-lauded 2023 album My Soft Machine, which includes the song “Eugene” that 88Nine listeners voted one of the year’s best tracks. She also returned to North America with a reasonable tour schedule limited mostly to this past March.
Parks’ calendar for the rest of 2024 is littered with festival appearances, including Glastonbury in late June. But she did manage to sneak in that long-awaited Milwaukee show among a handful of U.S. dates.
Tickets to her Sept. 17 performance are on sale now via The Rave website and box office. We’ll also have a few to give away starting next Monday, June 10, so make sure to visit our contests page for a chance to win 'em.
