Parquet Courts’ Sympathy for Life

Parquet Courts transition from punk to dance music began on 2018’s excellent Wide Awake!, an album that saw the Brooklyn outfit deliver their strongest material and performances to date with its cogent and focused sociopolitical commentary. Returning three years later with David Byrne and Hot Chip collaborator Rodaidh McDonald at the helm, Sympathy for Life sees the band broadening their exploration even further to touch on the collision of psychedelia and rave culture that came to be characterized in Britain as the "Madchester" scene. The inconsistent quality of singles “Walking at a Downtown Pace,” “Black Widow Spider” and “Homo Sapien” shrouded this potential, telegraphing a reversion thankfully avoided on the group’s seventh album. While solid in construction, these tracks are by no means bad, but a tad underwhelming, especially given the kinetic angularity of Wide Awake! The brooding “Marathon of Anger” is the first of Sympathy For Life’s highlights, channeling the obvious touchstone Remain In Light for a dubby electronic probe into the widespread Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. The shuffling aqueous groove that powers both “Plant Life” and “Sympathy for Life” follows in this vein, driving home the record’s larger message that the places we share unite us in a responsibility of care and empathy. The ethically complex post-punk narrative of “Application/Apparatus” takes aim at capitalism and technology as obstacles behind a hypnotic shimmering guitar melody. Of note are also the Afrobeat-inflected rhythms on “Zoom Out,” which compound in intensity for one the album’s most enjoyable head-nodding moments. While not every experiment is successful, Sympathy For Life nevertheless continues the long track record of growth in unexpected directions that make Parquet Courts one of the most exciting acts in rock today.

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If you like Sympathy For Life, check out:

• Entertainment! by Gang Of Four

• 9 by Pond

• Screamadelica by Primal Scream

• The Stone Roses by The Stone Roses

• Remain In Light by Talking Heads