Parquet Courts Don’t Have a New Album But We Interviewed Them Anyway

​Parquet Courts​pump out records at a pretty steady clip. Six years into a career that's produced some of the finer rock songs of the decade, and you'd forgive the New York-by-way-of-Texas four-piece for a few glib David Bowie "Without You I'm Nothing"​or Gang Of Four Content​ moments here and there. Luckily, Parquet Courts are in the business of releasing expansive, intelligent records and from all accounts, business is booming.

With songs like "One Man No City"- an anxious guitar meditation on urbane humanity- and "Two Dead Cops"- a charged explication on the partiality of justice, their latest Human Performance, released in April, is a coalition of self-reflection and philosophical conjecture.

Lyrically, songwriters Andrew Savage and Austin Brown are just as sharp on Human Performance as any other Parquet Courts release. If Light Up Gold evokes imagery of NYC mundanity, Sunbathing Animal carries the same language to questions of agency and constraint, and Content Nausea is a self aware reflection on identity in the age of big data, then Human Performance see's the songwriting duo turn their pen on themselves, in what's been self-described as The Parquet Courts Existential Album.

This summer the band is returning to Australia to play Falls Festival as well as shows in Sydney and Melbourne.  We caught up with guitarist and co-songwriter Austin Brown to chat about self-reflection, recording other NYC bands, and the importance of the secular Houston rap community.

NOISEY: On Human Performance there's references to cities and there's a sense of displaced identity. Has the dislocation that comes from touring impacted your songwriting? 
Austin Brown: Yeah I think so. I also think that coming and going from home so much we're able to see the changes that happen, maybe more clearly than people who are here all the time. I think that seeing your neighbourhood change and seeing your friend group morph in small, still shots throughout the year has a more dramatic effect than being at home all the time. We were able to tap into something and be more observant of these kinds of things in a slightly more objective way that I think resonates with people.

Andrew described Human Performance as your existential album. Would you agree? 
Yeah, there's a lot of existential questions on Human Performance for sure. I mean it's definitely an album full of self-reflection about where we fit in as people in the world rather than how the world fits in around us. Rather than just us observing the world and commenting on what we're observing, Human Performance is very much personal in the way that an existential crisis can be, where you're kind-of questioning yourself more than others and things outside of yourself.

There seems to be more anguish and introspection in Human Performance.
Yeah sure. I think personal and self-reflective songs can be hard to write in a way that's more genuine than cliche. So it was challenging to be more forthcoming and a bit more raw than we had been before. I think being honest about shortcomings or personal questions regarding your identity is really difficult to  be open and honest about. There's been songs that have hit on similar places before, but I think on Human Performance it's definitely less guarded than our previous records. I think overall people appreciate that.

Yeah sure. Honesty is a virtue, even in songwriting.  
Yeah, the directness is appreciated. When you can know what a song is about the first time you hear it and then have it grow on you as well. It doesn't always happen but I think that there's a lot of joy to be had when you can have that kind-of relationship with music and the people who you make it with and the people who listen to it.

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You've mentioned that on Human Performance you stopped using 'tricks' to disguise lyrics that were more vulnerable. What do you mean by this? 
I had a habit of writing lyrics that were a bit more revealing or personal or clearly about a certain thing that made me a bit uncomfortable so I would use metaphors or change certain phrasing around to reference something a bit more obscure. For me that song would maintain meaning but the listener wouldhave to delve into the lyrics pretty deep and read into the imagery to understand exactly what I might have been talking about. That was something that I tried to abandon when writing Human Performance. It was nice to step out of the comfort of that security blanket and just embrace being a musician. On Human Performance Ijust accepted  that this is my life now and for-better-or-for-worse had to get over that.

You mixed some of the previous Parquet Courts records. Did you mix this one as well? 
Yeah I did.

I also listened to Wall​ for the first time the other night. You recorded their latest record as well, right? 
Oh great. Yeah I worked on their 7" and their other record that I think might be coming out at some point. The 7" I just recorded them in their practice space and mixed it at my house.

Have you been working with many other bands lately? 
There's another band from New York called RIPS​ that I worked on their record with them. And there's a band made up of members from Priests and Downtown Boys called Gauche​, and I'm set to go into the studio with them in a month.

How long have you been recording music for? 
Quite a while. I got into it right before I moved to New York. I didn't get a real grasp on it until the last few years when I'm actually able to a descent job at it. I learnt through experimenting with my own music over the years in my apartment and figuring out what things do. When Parquet Courts started making records and we were able to afford to go into a studio then that set-up my curiosity. It had been a long time since I'd ever recorded in a studio with a band and so I made it my beeswax to understand what's going on the whole time.

You've come a long way since the Topless Juice​ experiments. 
Haha thanks. That was me trying to figure out how it all works.

You've always been a big supporter of rappers like Bun B and Lil Keke. How did you get so involved with Houston rap? 
I was a huge fan of it when I lived in Texas. I just developed this real affinity for Houston rap music because I think a lot of it just reminds me of where I came from. That music is very geographically specific and specific to a certain era as well. Through discovering more rappers and more albums from Houston I just developed a sort of obsession with it. It feels good to listen to and I really love it. Somehow Nardwuar​ found out about that and gave me a signed Bun B record. I'd been on a mission to get a hold of him forever but in a roundabout way we ended up finally getting in touch and becoming friends. He performed with us The Stephen Colbert Show. I'm actually working on the studio remix of that song at the moment so we can have it out on our next LP.

Does your affinity with outsider rap music influence your lyric writing at all? 
Maybe in a roundabout way. Lyrically, I like how nothing is off limits for rappers. In a lot of their music there's really specific things that relate to what's happening in the moment,  like a brand of cell phone or a specific reference to a current athlete or a tv show. I like that they don't mind being extremely current and don't mind referencing something something that may not be relevant in a year. That's interesting and bold in a weird way that you don't really find in rock music. We don't do a lot of that but I think that it definitely doesn't go without merit in our group as a reference. Even "Captive Of The Sun" has a kind of hip-hop influence and we have songs that have more a of a flow to them but it's a really difficult gap to bridge between rock and hip-hop. It's hard to do that tastefully, or to have obvious influence in there but we definitely are influenced in other ways.

You guys put your address on the back of your record so that fans can write to you. What's the most interesting thing you've been sent? 
Andrew gets all of that mail at his art studio. I got sent something, but I totally forget what it was now so I guess it wasn't that interesting. Maybe there's nothing that shows up haha. Whenever I'm at Andrew's studio I don't ask if there's any mail for me or anything. We've also given out our phone number before but only someone from our record label called it. So I guess people don't want to get in touch with us as much as we thought. We don't really have a rabid fanbase like some people. Parquet Courts fans a very respectful when it comes to mail and calling.

Parquet Courts Australian Tour 2017:
Falls Music and Arts Festival. Lorne, Marion Bay, Byron Bay and Fremantle
Jan 4 - Sydney at the Factory
Jan 5 - Melbourne at Shimmerlands, The University of Melbourne