Collapsed In Sunbeams (Love Record Stores 2021) vinyl

Even taking into account a pandemic to de-stablilise an entire industry, distracting everyone from music for at least a few months, Arlo Parks has been incredibly patient in the build up to her debut album. Having arrived in the common conscience with the excellent first single, 'Cola', the young London poet - who was just 20 when this album dropped in February 2021- has taken three years to put out a full length. But what a full length it is.

Of course, it's not re-writing any rulebooks or breaking moulds in particular. Nevertheless, this is first rate singer-songwriter fare. Sweet, crackly, subtle, delicate, full of strings, acoustic moments, pop breaks. More importantly, though, it's packed with pop cultural imagery and metaphors of the 21st Century. Sonically solid, but lyrically among the year and decade's most accomplished so far.