Black Dog

In the dark limbo of lockdown, London’s Arlo Parks released a quietly assured, self-contained masterpiece. ‘Black Dog’ feeds into the future of talking about mental health, intensely personal and truthful, and in that relatable, never relying on cliche or performativity.

We hear Arlo further honing her talent for narrative, as she charts the fear of watching a loved one suffer, made all the more painful because you are struggling too.

Humour, ‘I’d lick the grief right off your lips/ you do your eyes like Robert Smith’  is tempered with darkness straight to the point of brutality, ‘Sometimes it seems like you won’t survive this/ and honestly it’s terrifying’. The gorgeous harmonies that have become a staple in Arlo’s sound are layered over delicately hopeful guitar, their softness making the lyrics all the more devastating, ‘I take a jump off the fire escape, to make the black dog go away’.

Arlo manages to balance pain with tenderness, honesty with complexity making for a cathartic listen. Writing this gave me my first good cry in a while and the hope that, with voices like Arlo’s, we can further humanise struggles with mental health and progress on the path to a more empathetic world.