Parquet Courts share a new single/video, ‘Black Widow Spider’, from their forthcoming album, Sympathy For Life, out October 22nd on Rough Trade Records. Following their highly-praised lead single ‘Walking at a Downtown Pace’, ‘Black Widow Spider’ kicks off with scorching guitar. In A Savage’s words, “I told [producer] Rodaidh McDonald that I wanted to find a sound that was equal parts Can, Canned Heat and This Heat. He was really into that and probably took some glee in having such a bizarre challenge.” It’s one of the many songs on the new album that began with the band improvising onto tape, after which they started editing and cutting up, leading to the verse.
The accompanying video, directed and animated by Shayne Ehman, is simply great. “We were inspired by the claymation master Art Clokey,” says Ehmman. “I wanted the video to feel like it was shot in the 1950’s and so I used very old lenses. One was a brass projection lens from the 1860’s and another was radioactive.” Watch the video for ‘Black Widow Spider’:
Alongside the release of their first single last month, the band also announced the Power of Eleven – eleven global happenings that will precede the release of the album. The first of these took place in Manhattan with the Gay & Lesbian Big Apple Corp marching band debuting ‘Walking At A Downtown Pace’. The second of these is happening in Tokyo in conjunction with Big Love Records, with an extremely limited Black Widow Spider 7” and T shirt (there are 100 of each). More info for this event and the others has been revealed on the band’s website. Sign up to their mailing list for updates on more.
Sympathy For Life was built largely from improvised jams and produced in league with Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Hot Chip, David Byrne) and John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, Dry Cleaning). Unlike its globally adored predecessor, 2018’s Wide Awake!, the focus fell on grooves rather than rhythm. “Most of the songs were created by taking long improvisations and moulding them through our own editing,” explains Austin Brown. “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.” In a very real sense, the band sampled themselves, molding and chopping their rhythmic and melodic jams to create these songs, to manifest something new.
On Sympathy For Life, Parquet Courts’ thought-provoking rock is dancing to a new tune. The album finds the Brooklyn band at both their most instinctive and electronic, spinning their bewitching, psychedelic storytelling into fresh territory, yet maintaining their unique identity.
Parquet Courts – Sympathy For Life is out October 22 via Rough Trade Records / Rhythmethod.
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