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I don’t know anything about lighting or setting things up. It’s all sort of spontaneous. I shoot whatever is around me

Parquet Courts

A CHILL LIL’ Q&A WITH PARQUET COURTS BY NAZ KAWAKAMI

Parquet Courts are a band that have once again brought their specific kind of music–the kind of music you’d hear late at night in a subterranean room with low ceilings, stuck in the swampy mess of a crowd shoving and sloshing within itself–to the Australian continent; more specifically, the humble Splendour stage. Andrew Savage, Sean Yeaton, Max Savage, and Austin Brown as Parquet Courts boast an impressively long and well developed catalogue, vivid and ever-clever lyrical themes, and a diverse array of guitar-driven, genre-challenging tracks that consistently make you feel like maybe you’re off somewhere a bit cooler than wherever you are, walking at a downtown pace, determined to find the night. We emailed Parquet guitarist/singer Andrew Savage to ask a couple hardball (but mostly softball) questions.

What’s it like out on the festival touring circuit now that Covid is semi/maybe over with? It’s amazing how quickly everything just went away really. We haven’t done too many festivals yet, but we’ve done Primavera and that was just like before. People seem more gracious and appreciative. And horny. You are a very well-designed band in a visual sense (album art, show flyers, etc.) and you’ve become very well known for the visuals that accompany the music. How do you go about translating the music into a visual medium, and can you explain that connection? How important is it to you to represent yourselves authentically visually as well as musically? Thanks for saying that, I do all the visuals in the band, and it’s one of my favorite things about being in Parquet Courts. I view the process as sort of like language translation. How do I put these sounds into images? How do I convince someone they need to hear this? How do I alchemize sound into light? These are questions every musician should ask when they decide to represent themselves visually. Sometimes I wonder if our visuals are really that good, or if we’re just putting in slightly more effort than everybody else because record sleeves today, in general, aren’t that great. I guess the difference is most people designing them envision them as a thumbnail on someone’s phone, but I see them on the wall of a record shop, and somebody walking in and seeing that record, and without hearing it, know that they need to have it. I saw you at Brooklyn Steel in April and you implored the crowd to take it upon themselves to open a DIY venue, saying that you wouldn’t be here as a band without those DIY spaces. Can you expand on that and explain what you believe is so important about small/DIY venues and creative spaces? How did they help you to be where you are? When Parquet Courts first began playing shows, we weren’t playing clubs. We were playing DIY spaces that were located in warehouses and apartments and short lease commercial spaces. There were loads of them around and on any given night in Brooklyn, you could go from Death By Audio, to Monster Island, to Glasslands, to Market Hotel, to Silent Barn, to 538 Johnson, to Palisades, to The Wallet and witness a massive spectrum of creative output. In the last few years of the decade, they started dropping one by one. Now the only venue on that list that exists is Market Hotel. The pandemic wiped them out. I encouraged people at that show to start something because I knew there were young people in the audience who might have been toying with the idea, and we need something like that desperately right now. Those spaces are where people met their friends and bandmates and collaborators and lovers. Having these spaces keeps music alive for everyone, everywhere. You’re a distinctly New York band, what are your thoughts on how geography has shaped your (or any band’s) sound? Well, first off, America can be a hostile environment for anyone who wants to make a living, especially for artists. New York City is oppressively expensive, but filled with artists, so also very inspiring. Unless you’re rich, which none of us are or have ever been, you have to work. Being a New York artist means survival in the face of forces that are constantly against you. It means you have to constantly be on the next thing. If you’re a band, it means you are always touring, and when you’re not touring, you’re doing the other thing that makes you money. For me, that’s visual art. I’m on tour now, flying home tomorrow. I know I’ll be in my studio immediately, working on art, because I’ve just paid an absurd amount of rent for a share in an apartment I haven’t lived at in a month. I think it’s these conditions that make New York artists look and sound the way they do. There is a desperation and a hunger in being of that city, a fight to keep your head above water. That sort of energy brings something to art that people need. It’s the reason the Velvets and the Dolls don’t sound like The Beach Boys or the Mamas and the Papas. What’s your hangover cure? Drinking less.

CATCH PARQUET COURTS SUNDAY AT 8.30PM AT THE GW MCLENNAN TENT. Is Sean Yeaton the best bassist alive? For the true believers it’s not even a question. Definitely one of the most underrated, that’s for damn sure. One day people are going to see him as a virtuoso and talk about him with the same reverence they do Thundercat. He can bounce around a song like a little rubber ball, or float through it like a balloon. It’s sort of like knowing him as a friend. Sometimes he’s the life of the party, telling hilarious stories with the cadence of a seasoned auctioneer. At the present moment, he’s quietly dreaming out of the window of a tour van. To all the Yeaton-heads out there, keep the faith. What advice would you give to a band in the Splendour crowd who wants to be you? Just be yourself, and try to write as many songs as you can.

Being a New York artist means survival in the face of forces that are constantly against you. It means you have to constantly be on the next thing.