Sympathy For Life - Parquet Courts: Review
Parquet Courts
are a New York based garage and punk rock outfit who garnered a cult like underground following for their hard-hitting performances and socially conscious delivery. They teamed up with super producer Danger Mouse for their 2018 album Wide Awake! which became their most popular release to date and one of the most universally acclaimed rock records of the last few years.
Review By Lav:
After being a bit hit or miss on Parquet Courts in their early days once they signed to Rough Trade records and released Human Performance I was much more on board. They followed this up with a criminally underrated collaboration album alongside Daniele Luppi and Yeah Yeah Yeah's frontwoman Karen O called Milano that you should definitely check out if you like Parquet Courts. For a lot of people the story of the band centers entirely around their previous release, 2018's Wide Awake! and while it isn't fair to reduce the band down to just one album, when you release something THAT good it kind of comes with the territory. The best modern rock albums are often indirect, experimental and abstract, the cake feels pretty much baked for this era of contemporary rock in terms of critical acclaim. But in comes Parquet Courts who with the help of Danger Mouse made one of the most direct, exciting and socially conscious rock records I've ever heard. It's obviously difficult to follow up something that great and I didn't expect a band like Parquet Courts to want to retread old ground. Sympathy For Life is a bit less thematically cohesive and much more instrumentally obscure record than its predecessor, but much of what the band does well persists.
There are moments on the record where the band sounds very familiar and they continue to do these sounds justice. Walking At A Downtown Pace was a fun single and album opener right in line with what Wide Awake does so well. It's a strong grooving and incredibly catchy rock song with an exciting and anthemic group chorus. Homo Sapien sees the band throwing it back even further to the garage rock stylings of Human Performance. It's a short, hooky and lyrically pointed garage rock song that I've come to enjoy quite a bit.
The rest of the record sees the band stepping a bit out of their comfort zone which manifests itself as much more reserved and abstract cuts. While some of these go over kind of weird there are definitely some highlights. Marathon Of Anger kicks off with some abstract almost funky bass and some eerie synth lines. It's a pretty interesting track that evokes some 80's aesthetics of classic post-punk and even hints of new wave on the hook. Thematically it's all about how New York has changed socially in the past few years and the band approaches it with the creatively handy style you'd expect from them and it grew on me every time. Application/Apparatus is a weirdly structured track that I've grown to completely love. The way that Andrew's refrains build on each other with the backing vocals to bring the song up to its high point rules and I'm obsessed with the little splashes of industrial sounds in the instrumental. This is definitely an already off kilter band operating at their most kooky and I'm living for it.
Zoom Out is almost daring you to call it corny with the hokey refrains and even country grade instrumentation. Weirdly enough the band seems well aware of what their doing and play into the fun elements of the song which I can't help but enjoy. My tolerance for the hokey refrains ends on the next track Trullo which is a shame because I think it's a lyrical highlight. The band is clearly trying to take it much more seriously this time around but the instrumental is still filled with stuff that sounds like surreal meme effects. While there are plenty of bands who could pull off a song like this I'm not sure Parquet Courts are one of them.
Black Widow Spider was the 2nd single and I've never been crazy about it. I still think it's really awkward and the gentler singing doesn't really pair well with the gritty driving guitar riff. On top of that neither really fit with the off kilter drumming. Even though it all comes together for a decent hook I'm still just not crazy about it. Pulcinella is a long and slow developing finale that I can stick with for a while but can't help but wonder why it doesn't pack a stronger punch for the conclusion. We get more sharp lyrical content and a really tangible build but the payoff is just a bit of a disappointment that leaves the record off on a dour note.
My least favorite songs on the record see the band being something that they haven't been in a long time, boring. Just Shadows is extremely linear by the bands standards and the simple instrumental core gets pretty old as it goes on. The guitar soloing on the bridge is decent but doesn't really wow me enough to save the song. I was really surprised to see Plant Life make the cut after initially thinking it was just a throwaway single released exclusively on vinyl earlier this year. It is just so boring and uneventful for a Parquet Courts song and while I think the conversational style it employs reminds me of a very specific Matmos song that I love, it really doesn't fit in here and I'm not sure the band does the sound justice. It's even worse right in the middle of the album as a nearly 6 minute slog that feels like a massive uphill battle to sit through. The worst of the bunch is Sympathy For Life an instantly forgettable song that doesn't really seem to speak to any kind of concept or thematic tie in for the record. For a title track it's weird that this song is the easiest to overlook.
Sympathy For Life definitely has its moments of exciting energy and charming idiosyncrasy and after a mixed reaction at first the record as a whole has definitely grown on me. Even with that being said this is a pretty average rock record despite some of the creative experiments it indulges with. Without the thematic through line these tracks don't sound quite as cohesive but the bigger issue is that they just generally don't pop as much as I expect a set of tracks from Parquet Courts to. I have no doubts that the band will continue to impress me for years to come but I also think this will ultimately be more of a footnote in their discography. 6/10
Album Cover Review by Tyler Judson:
This cover is a lot to take in but all the individual part are successful. The line quality of the drawing paired with the vibrant colors make everything pop and nothing falls into the background. The subtle branding in the top corner adds personality and helps make it more than just a piece of art. 7/10
For more rock check out my review of Turnstile's Glow On here
