Listen to Parquet Courts’ ‘Walking At A Downtown Pace’ from new album ‘Sympathy For Life’


Parquet Courts have shared their latest single ‘Walking At A Downtown Pace’ – you can hear the new track below.

The song is taken from the Brooklyn four-piece’s upcoming new album ‘Sympathy For Life’, which is set for release on October 22 on Rough Trade Records and was recently previewed with a physical-only single of the album track ‘Plant Life’.

Inspired by the likes of Primal Scream and Pink Floyd and produced in league with Rodaidh McDonald and John Parish, ‘Sympathy For Life’ is, according to co-frontman Austin Brown, “influenced by the party”.

“[2018 album] ‘Wide Awake!’ was a record you could put on at a party,” Brown explained in a statement. “’Sympathy For Life’ is influenced by the party itself.”

Parquet Courts
Parquet Courts – ‘Sympathy For Life’

Citing “some amazing rock records [which] have been made from mingling in dance music culture, from Talking Heads to ‘Screamadelica’”, Brown added: “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.”

Of ‘Sympathy For Life”s composition, Brown said: “Most of the songs were created by taking long improvisations and moulding them through our own editing. 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.”

Parquet Courts have also shared the Daniel Arnold-directed video today (August 18) for ‘Walking At A Downtown Pace’, which you can watch above.

“We see New York City from the vantage point of someone busily hurrying through it,” Savage explained about the clip. “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.”

You can see the tracklist for Parquet Courts’ ‘Sympathy For Life’ below.

  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’

Parquet Courts have also announced ‘Feel Free – Sympathy For Life, Visualised’, a livestream of 11 videos which will accompany the release of ‘Sympathy For Life’ in October.

The band enlisted 11 visual artists from around the world to “create a completely unique experience” for fans who buy tickets to ‘Feel Free – Sympathy For Life, Visualised’, which can be purchased here. The livestream will air on October 20.