Parquet Courts announce new album ‘Sympathy for Life’

Three years on since the release of ‘Wide Awake!’, Parquet Courts have announced that their brand new record ‘Sympathy For Life’ will be arriving on 22nd October on Rough Trade Records.

“‘Wide Awake!’ was a record you could put on at a party,” says co-frontman Austin Brown. “’Sympathy For Life’ is influenced by the party itself. Historically, some amazing rock records have been made from mingling in dance music culture – from Talking Heads to Screamadelica. Our goal was to bring that into our own music. Each of us, in our personal lives, has been going to more dance parties. Or rather, we were pre-pandemic, which is when this record was made.”

“Most of the songs were created by taking long improvisations and moulding them through our own editing,” he continues. “The biggest asset we have as artists is the band. After 10 years together, our greatest instrument is each other. The purest expression of Parquet Courts is when we are improvising.”

Sharing first single ‘Walking At A Downtown Pace’ alongside the news, it’s accompanied by a video directed by New York City street photographer Daniel Arnold.

“We see New York City from the vantage point of someone busily hurrying through it,” explains co-frontman A Savage. “That’s what life can be like here; a world of constant motion surrounds you while you’re just walking toward where you need to be. There’s a lot of beauty that can be missed, and it wasn’t until the streets were virtually empty that I did miss it. The song was written before all quarantine, but eerily enough the lyrics echo that longing. Now the city is back and, so it seems, are Parquet Courts.”

Check it out now below.

‘Sympathy For Life’ Tracklisting:
1. Walking At A Downtown Pace
2. Black Widow Spider
3. Marathon of Anger
4. Just Shadows
5. Plant Life
6. Application Apparatus
7. Homo Sapien
8. Sympathy For Life
9. Zoom Out
10. Trullo
11. Pulcinella