Photo by Ben Rayner
Following the high-thinking art-punk breakout of 2012’s Light Up Gold, Parquet Courts met the elevated stakes for 2014’s intentionally nervy follow-up, Sunbathing Animal, an album that proved singer Andrew Savage hadn’t completely drained his well of insightful ideas. Later that year Content Nausea, an under-the-radar release between the two main songwriters who were billed under the homonym Parkay Quarts, displayed the duo’s ability to throw together a cohesive and discerning record on the quick. At the time, Parquet Courts seemed like an unstoppable force of droning guitar riffs and perceptive cultural observations.
That is until this November, when the band threw a sharp pump fake. While there are often multiple threads to unwind in Parquet Courts’ incisive social commentary, their latest EP, Monastic Living, made a sweeping artistic statement by saying nothing at all. Other than the opener, where Savage’s shouting is all but drowned out by background noise (“We’re just a band” he asserts over screeching guitars on “No No No!”), the singer remains wordless throughout the heavily improvised nine-song effort. That silence even extended to the media, as the band refused to do any press during the time around the release.
“I think one doesn’t always have something to say,” Savage explains, giving one of his first interviews since the EP came out. “On the first song off Monastic Living, I say a lot.”
Indeed, that decision confirmed Parquet Courts’ unwillingness to conform to expectations. That rejection has always shown up in the band’s songs, but never quite this on the nose. The influences range from New York-based avant-garde musicians John Cale and Angus MacLise to New Zealand drone musicians The Dead C and electronic music pioneer Terry Riley. “Monastic Living is something that’s been in Parquet Courts as long as we’ve been a band,” Savage says. “It just seemed like the right time for it to happen.”
Savage remains acutely aware of the band’s perception. “Not only is it self-contained commentary, but it’s also a commentary on our other records in the band as a whole,” he says. On the heels of moving from the What’s Your Rupture? to the much larger London-based record label Rough Trade, the singer wanted to make it abundantly clear that the band had no plans of cleaning themselves up for a wider audience.
“People tend to think signing to a major label includes drastically changing your sound to a more polished and accessible one,” he says. “I wanted to subvert that notion.”
Indeed, Monastic Living didn’t win over many new fans, if any, and the existing base got the feeling that the EP was merely at best a throwaway record, and at worst a borderline unlistenable one. What’s undisputed is the release further cemented the idea that Parquet Courts were capable of anything. The band never releases anything lightly, but there was certainly some deliberate irony surrounding the EP.
“It’s an instrumental drone record that came out on Black Friday,” Savage frankly refers to Monastic Living. “It’s a record that doesn’t reveal itself immediately. There’s definitely a message to it. I think patience is probably one of them. I would encourage people to let that record reveal itself over time.”
While never explicitly referring to the previous album, the EP feels like a response to Content Nausea, especially the album’s title track, in which Savage rolls through all the ways more content is progressively being piled into our modern lives. “Wasting dollars, wasting hours / Wasting talent with wasted power / No one says it but it’s known / The more connected, the more alone,” he breathlessly sings.
“Living in New York, which is where the cover depicts, there’s always action going on,” Savage says. “There’s always texts that you’re forced to see; there’s always sound. Content is everywhere. People have attached the notion of anti-technology or Internet culture in that song; a bit of it is that, but also it’s the content of our analog life, our daily life, and how content, whatever you want to call it, is an inescapable part of being human that’s only growing. We’re only getting more of it. To me, it’s about trying to find peace amongst all of that.”
That cultural anxiety continues on forthcoming full-length Human Performance, due April 8. While Savage remains hushed on the album details, the sepia-toned music video for the first single, “Dust,” finds a man pushing papers, eating lunch and checking his cellphone, all while confined behind his office desk. “Dust is everywhere / Sweep,” Savage sings.
“I think people might be surprised by the next record in a way that Monastic Living surprised them,” he speculates, “but perhaps maybe in a polar sort of way.”
Parquet Courts headline Turner Hall Ballroom on Monday, Feb. 15 with Love of Everything. Doors open at 7 p.m.
