Smart technology’s outright assault on human existence is daunting to think about, but music that explores it can still be fun. Take it from Parquet Courts. On the New York-based art-rockers’ seventh studio album, Sympathy for Life, a vital combo of funk grooves and punk attitude turn doomscroll living into high art.   

For the past decade, the Andrew Savage-fronted group has grown an impeccable catalog with the basic building blocks of guitars, bass, and drums. All the while they’ve gradually expanded their sonic arsenal with synthesizers and additional percussion. “Homo Sapien” and “Black Widow Spider” are transcendent descendants of the fury that built their rowdy live reputation, but this album’s deeper rewards are discovering Parquet Courts’ new identities. A group that has fruitfully collaborated with UGK rapper Bun B and Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O in recent years continues to surprise.

Throughout Sympathy for Life, Savage and fellow lead vocalist Austin Brown toy with the language, conventions, and artifacts of our modern technological conveniences. “Application/Apparatus” is a time capsule scene taking place inside a vehicle during a ride share transaction, and elsewhere are head-on confrontations with daily fixtures like Airbnb, social media, Amazon Prime, plastics, and Siri.

To soundtrack this conversation convincingly, the band’s instrumentation and production frequently succumb to today’s technological advances and the retro-futuristic bleeps and bloops found in krautrock. The nearly six minutes of “Plant Life” find the band patiently letting the seeds of a catchy beat blossom into an immersive collage of ideas. In 2018, Wide Awake! teased rhythmic reactions to the pulse of humanity, which have served both LCD Soundsystem and Talking Heads well. From the riotous opener “Walking at a Downtown Pace” on down, this album is like a big OS update that takes those ideas and sprints ahead.

Parquet Courts did not make an album about how they learned to stop worrying and love the algorithm, nor do they give the message that all is lost. Take the closing couplet of “Just Shadows,” which argues, “Life is not as modern as it seems / can’t pick who you love.” It could be dismal or hopeful take, depending upon how you look at it. There’s a complexity found in those gray areas in between, and Sympathy for Life is here for that.

External Links

Parquet Courts - official site