The Happy Accidents & Information Overload That Led To A Surprise LP

Things obviously happen at a rapid rate of knots in the world of New York-based indie outfit Parquet Courts (or Parkay Quarts, depending on their mood and which of their releases you pick up). Their third album Sunbathing Animal dropped last June to tremendous acclaim – accompanied by the extended bout of airport hopping which always corresponds with such key events in a band’s life cycle – but instead of taking a well-earned break when the excitement wrapped up, they headed steadfastly in the opposite direction.

Parquet Court’s co-frontmen and chief songwriters Andrew Savage and Austin Brown holed up with a 4-track recorder and some ideas, and before long they’d concocted the band’s fourth album, Content Nausea, which hit shelves mere months after its predecessor had done the same. They’re not contrarian by nature as much as they just don’t seem to pay much heed to convention, that DIY mantra of ‘do what you want, when you want’ seeming to fit them like a glove. Hopefully a nice warm glove, given the brutal New York winter which Savage explains to The Music he’s barely surviving.

“It’s been so fucking cold here – last week my goddamn moustache froze to my face, I was literally holding it down,” he marvels. “It was eight degrees Fahrenheit – I don’t know what that is in Celsius, negative something I’m sure [Fact check: -13 degrees Celsius]. It’s not so bad here right now – it’s cold but it’s not like fucking cold – so I’m okay with that. It’s not like ‘you have to wear a face mask’ cold right now.

“It’s not the actual cold that bothers me – I grew up in Texas and it still gets cold there, just not for as long – but in New York it’s cold from October to May pretty much, it gets so old after a while. By the time that March rolls around, you’re so done with it.”

It seemed during their recent Splendour In The Grass appearance in July that Savage in particular was nonplussed by the warmth of our winter, remarking mid-set that Byron Bay’s climate wasn’t quite holding up its end of the seasonal bargain.

“I was kinda excited about it, honestly, because your winter is just summer by another name,” he chuckles. “During the day people have their bikini tops on and shit – it doesn’t look like winter to me.”

That Splendour set was the only Australian show of that particular visit, but it was enough to highlight the fact that Parquet Courts were an entirely different entity with their proper line-up intact (on their inaugural visit earlier that year for Laneway Festival and some headline shows, their drummer Max Savage – Andrew’s younger sibling – had been absent due to study commitments, being replaced for the run by Greg Rutheford).

“Oh yeah, of course, it’s always best when Max is in the band,” Savage concurs. “Greg, who was playing drums, he’s a kickass drummer, but Max is part of the creative process – he’s the one who writes the parts, they’re his beast – so of course he’s going to be the most natural playing them. Greg’s a really competent musician, I mean we played in bands together [Wiccans and Bad Sports] so we were familiar with playing with him, and it worked out fortunately because he’s like Max in that he’s a really quick study – it doesn’t take him long to learn anything.”

It was one of those things where we’d promised to do a show in Europe – or a few shows in Europe, we’d booked them – and then Sean said, ‘Oh, I’m having a kid’.

Max wasn’t present for the Content Nausea sessions either, but this time not because of studies per se.

“He’s graduated – I went to the graduation party, it was great – but neither he or Sean [Yenton – bass] went on the most recent European tour with us because they both had things to do; real life things to do, not like being in a band, actual responsibilities,” Savage smiles. “[Touring with an abridged line-up] is not something I like doing. It was one of those things where we’d promised to do a show in Europe – or a few shows in Europe, we’d booked them – and then Sean said, ‘Oh, I’m having a kid’. But you can’t cancel – the show’s gotta go on – so we just went out and did it, because we’d promised we would. But we sort of made lemonade out of lemons because we started a new band PCPC with our friends in [New York noise merchants] PC Worship, so most of the tour was PCPC shows but we did do ‘as promised’ some Parquet Courts with PCPC members. It was kind of a site-specific thing, although we’ve been offered more shows and I’m down to do it, we just haven’t talked to the group together. You can definitely expect a live [PCPC] LP coming out sometime in 2015.”

This absence of the rhythm section on that tour also flowed onto the Content Nausea sessions, which were chiefly the domain of the Savage/Brown partnership. Is this why it was credited to ‘Parkay Quarts’ (as was 2013 EP Tally All The Things That You Broke) rather than the conventional band name?

“No, I think that’s how a lot of people interpreted it and that’s fine,” Savage explains, “but we’ve put out records with that spelling with the normal line-up – it’s something we did to keep people on their toes just for the fuck of it.”

Many pundits (and one presumes fans) were bemused by the band dropping two albums in a matter of months, but it’s not that long ago that such prolificy was pretty much par for the course.

“Yeah, well, you know, Guns N’ Roses did it and The Beatles did it,” Savage deadpans. “I don’t know if it was ever a model – maybe it was – but I don’t think of things in terms of sales cycles; when it’s time to record, it’s time to go in and get it done. Once you’ve recorded something – once it’s in the can – you only want to get it out as soon as possible before you get tired of it.

“All these songs we pretty much wrote as we recorded it. It’s an interesting record in that it was pretty much written and recorded and mixed in two weeks, and that was only in October. So this was recorded in October and came out in December, so it was a really quick turnaround it, but every song was written in that session except Uncast Shadow Of A Southern Myth, which was a song that I’ve been trying to finish writing for years, and then it finally felt like I’d come as close as I’d ever get to nailing it.”

Was it a preconceived plan to go in and hammer out an album super-fast or the product of an unexpected burst of creativity?

I love doing recording on 4-track because I’m not tech-savvy enough to know my way around a studio.

“No, we were supposed to record a 7" – just four songs – that’s what we went in to do, and then this got added and that got added and then I was like, ‘Well, I’ve got this old song that I really want to finish so it will quit haunting me’, so it was a happy accident that we ended up with a lot of different stuff that we hadn’t planned on recording,” Savage recalls. “We talked about, ‘Should we just make this four different 7"s?’ and I was, like, ‘Nah, let’s make it a record. It was recorded all at once, it should go together’.

“[Recording it on 4-track] was mainly logistics [rather than aesthetics]. We didn’t have a big recording budget, but also I love doing recording on 4-track because I’m not tech-savvy enough to know my way around a studio, but I’ve been recording on 4-track since I bought one when I was fifteen or sixteen so I know how to work the machines really well. We recorded American Specialties (2011), our first release, on 4-track so in a way it was a return to form for that record too.”

Throughout both the songs and artwork on Content Nausea (and even the record’s title), there seems to be a thread concerning the tendency towards information and sensory overload in today’s social media-driven society, the absolute deluge of data we have to compete with on a daily basis and the feeling of claustrophobia that comes with trying to process it all. 

“With Content Nausea the main thing is just sort of what the [album] cover’s about, it’s just about being overflooded with information in just your daily modern life, whether that be technology information or just an onslaught of data,” Savage reflects. “Especially living in New York, there’s data everywhere – signs and letters and construction, new buildings going up and old buildings going down – a lot of it’s just about the way that New York is changing. It’s just kind of about that two weeks really, and what was on my mind in that two weeks when I was writing the lyrics to it.

“I think there’s some claustrophobia on the record for sure. From my end that’s probably best represented in a song like Psycho Structures, or maybe even to an extent Pretty Machines, but it did definitely want to have a feeling like Sunbathing Animal does of an amount of distress.”

Pretty Machines is interesting in that the lyrics find Savage almost flipping back this discomfort on himself and examining his own role in the data deluge.

“Pretty Machines is kind of about being aware of your position as a consumer, and the role that you play in this society that you more or less despise,” Savage ponders. “Just kind of feeling helpless and being a part of consumer society, but it’s also kind of a sweet comfort in knowing that it’s not exactly your fault and there’s something bigger than you that controls this. I guess one of the reasons that I made it so poppy was that I wanted it to sound like a pop radio song, and pop radio is perfect for getting rid of those sort of anxieties – when you get overrun by that self-aware modern nausea, it’s perfect to put on a pop song or a pop movie or read pop literature to help you forget your troubles, you know?”

Content Nausea also contains two excellent covers – Texan psych legends 13th Floor Elevators’ Slide Machine plus a stoic take on Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ – which Savage attests had both been floating around the band’s orbit since well before the sessions.

These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ is kind of my karaoke go-to; when it really comes time to bring down the house I’ll bust [it] out.

“Both have been in my repertoire for a while,” he tells. “Slide Machine is a classic Parquet Courts cover song – we’ve covered it over the years pretty frequently – and These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ is kind of my karaoke go-to; when it really comes time to bring down the house I’ll bust out These Boots Are Made For Walkin’. I’m kind of obsessed with karaoke and the culture of it – I love it. It’s fun, but it’s not just fun, it’s really interesting to see what attracts people to do karaoke, so that’s kind of the idea for me. But I think there’s also some appropriation – by appropriating those lyrics I think they have a new meaning in the context of this album. Somebody described [our version] as ‘retarded Lou Reed’, which I think was meant to be a diss but I took it as a massive compliment.”

Aforementioned album closer Uncast Shadow Of A Southern Myth is another highlight, although Savage explains that the song’s genesis was rather unsavoury by nature.

“That’s a totally true story about having a gun pulled out on us, and the guy who used that gun in Mississippi ended up killing a guy,” he reveals. “That was the reason I was able to finish it – this guy Paul MacLeod had this 24-hour psychotic Elvis worship museum in his house in Mississippi called Graceland Too, and the third time we went to visit him he pulled a gun out on us because Austin asked him if he had one; I’d already been writing that song about him, but when he killed that guy and I realised that he would have killed the guy with that same gun, that’s what made me finish the song.”

Parquet Courts will be returning to Australia in March to play Golden Plains and some more club shows – their third Antipodean adventure in just over a year – and Savage says that they’re looking forward to busting out some Content Nausea tracks.

“Yeah, we can play nearly all of them,” he enthuses. “We’ll have to figure out a new set-list for Australia – granted there will be these new songs, but also I want there to be some ‘new newer’ stuff. I kind of took December off after I got back from that tour, but I’m just kind of starting [to write] again. I don’t have anything really solid yet but, who knows, that could change tomorrow. I have some ideas of maybe some covers to do for Australia that might be fun, and I do also have some songs written – spare leftover songs and reworkings – so I’m not too worried about it, honestly.”

Before we let Savage return to the cool climes of NYC, we need to enquire about his old band Teenage Cool Kids, the Denton outfit that existed between 2006-2011 and who released three excellent long-players: Queer Salutations (2007), Foreign Lands (2009) and Denton After Sunset (2011). The sound and feel of Teenage Cool Kids is a far more basic indie vibe than Parquet Courts, but the indubitable standard of these great albums helps (at least in part) explain why Parquet Courts seemed to land in our midst a few years back with such a fully formed sound and sensibility.

“The story with that band is the story of so many bands – we were around for four or five years, we toured our asses off, we recorded all the time and it kind of got to the point where we didn’t really have a lot of people coming out to our shows and we were losing money every tour,” Savage recounts. “But there was always a dedicated fanbase, just very small – that band kind of had a cult following back in its day – and it’s because of that cult following that we were able to do anything that we did ever. But I’ve noticed because I released Denton After Sunrise on my own label [Dull Tools] – it’s sold out now, but I’m going to repress it this year – but I’ve definitely noticed a surge in popularity for Teenage Cool Kids after Parquet Courts.

“I think Parquet Courts have introduced a lot of people to that band. Chris Pickering – the bass player of Teenage Cool Kids, is who I do Dull Tools with – he’s one of my best friends, we’re roommates. And actually it’s funny, because tomorrow Bradley Kerl – the drummer from Teenage Cool Kids – is in town, he lives in Texas but he’ll be visiting New York for the weekend. He’s an artist whose career seems to be taking off right now. But yeah, I get asked about that band every once in a while, and they’re definitely times that I look back on fondly. That was my first pretty serious band and it’s great that there are new fans for the band.”