Sympathy For Life marks perhaps Parquet Courts' boldest change in genre, seeing the band embrace dance-punk and synth-rock in an attempt to evolve their sound.
Words: Dominic Gibson
The American post-punk quartet Parquet Courts have never been averse to changes in style. From indie-rock to art-punk to garage the band has strived to change up their sound from album to album. However, their newest release, Sympathy For Life, marks perhaps their boldest change in genre, seeing the band embrace dance-punk and synth-rock in an attempt to evolve their sound.
Parquet Courts previous album, 2018’s Wide Awake!, was their most successful release to date and for good reason: the album managed to broach complex political themes such as the normalisation of violence and the threat of global warming whilst also creating an exceedingly funky and righteously angry sound. It garnered much critical acclaim and it felt like the band had really hit their zenith. However, in the aftermath of the Wide Awake! tour, the band decided to transition away from rock aiming to move their sound in new directions. Frontman Austin Brown commented in a Rolling Stones interview that ‘there’s lots of bands that can write a Parquet Courts song, and I’ve heard some that were not written by us’, indicating that after a decade of making music the band felt their sound was becoming too familiar.
According to interviews their new album was inspired by the New York club scene as well as a healthy mix of psychedelics, the results being the band embracing more dance, synth and psychedelic influences. In order to achieve this new sound, the band would perform hour-long jam sessions in the studio before cutting the music down to fit the album's five to six minute tracks. Many of these tracks were also supplemented by synths, mixers and a selection of producers whose expertise lay more on the electronic side of the music industry. This session centric approach can best be heard in the album's closing track 'Pulcinella', its slow and sweeping guitars help to transport the listener into the midst of one of the aforementioned sessions with it providing a beautiful and introspective close to album as vocalist Andrew Savage croons about lost and bygone acquaintances. The album also has songs more reminiscent of the bands previous work: the opening track ‘Walking at a Downtown Pace’ is a bombastic celebration of city life that, despite being written before the global lockdowns, sounds uncannily like an anthem for life post-pandemic. ‘Homo Sapien’ similarly retains the frenetic energy of the band's former work and is a standout track with its hectic garage tinged instrumentals acting as the perfect juxtaposition to the lyrics discussing how society and technology holds back the primal nature of humans.
This praise of the band’s old sound is not to discount the band’s new sound; a track like the spacey, drum-led ‘Plant Life’ is a great example of how the band’s session approach works wonderfully when applied to a more psychedelic track. Meanwhile 'Zoom Out', with its groovy bass line, rhythmic guitars and layered vocals creates an exceedingly funky sound that is a definite highlight of the album. ‘Sympathy for Life’, the album's title track, is relatively short and lyrically scarce but an incredibly instrumentally rich piece that is still revealing layers of nuance after each listen. Yet this different style is not without its flaws, the song Application/Apparatus is the best example of the band's new sound falling flat. On this track the synths and additional effects fail to elevate the band’s sound, with it coming up far short of the dance-punk energy the song seems to be aiming for; instead the synths serve only to dull both the instrumentals and vocals leading to a monotonous sounding track. These issues aren’t omni-present but songs like ‘Marathon of Anger’ and ‘Trullo’ similarly suffer from either their vocals or instrumentation feeling diminished by the bands shift in sound, evidence that the band hasn’t fully mastered their new style yet.
Within Sympathy for Life Parquet Courts definitely build on the themes of their previous albums with their lyrics having an eye towards social issues. The album places modern living front and centre and in doing so paints a picture of society on a precipice. Nearly every song on the album, even those with seemingly mundane subject matters, hides peripheral references to looming disaster, fake news, and the numbness of the digital age. However, Sympathy for Life does fail to reach the heights of the band’s other albums with the messaging falling a bit too close to cliché ideas like ‘computer bad’. This isn’t to say the writing itself is bad, but it definitely lacks the sharpness and dark humour of both Wide Awake! and Human Performance; Parquet Courts two prior releases.
Instrumentally the album is a bold step in a new direction and one that the group manages to pull off for the most part. Whilst at some points the band's sound can feel dampened by the synths and mixers the majority of the album benefits from the new approach with songs like 'Zoom Out' and 'Sympathy for Life' showing just how promising this change in style can be. Furthermore, the presence of songs that sound more akin to their previous work means that those who don’t enjoy the new sound will still have something for them. Whilst lyrically the album fails to rise to the heights of Parquet Courts previous work, it seems clear that the band's focus was on instrumental evolution and in doing so other aspects of the album were forced to take a back seat. It's definitely commendable to hear Parquet Courts trying to change their style rather than allowing themselves to stagnate in the same sound, something which would have been very easy for them to do after the success of Wide Awake!. While they definitely haven’t mastered this new style, Sympathy for Life is a really exciting shift and offers a glimpse of what the band hopes to become.
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