Human Performance was recorded over the course of a year, and expands the boundaries of Parquet Courts’ sound. It is set to be the most accessible of the band’s albums.
The themes are similar to 2014’s Content Nausea, which began with the lyrics, “Every day it starts, anxiety”. The album examines the anxieties of modern life, as singer, guitarist and producer Austin Brown comments: “The unavoidable noise of NYC that can be maddening, the kind of the impossible struggle against clutter, whether it’s physical or mental or social.”
Brown’s co-vocalist Andrew Savage sees the album in a slightly different light, saying that “I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance. I felt like a sort of malfunctioning apparatus, like a machine programmed to be human showing signs of defect.”
For more information, visit the Rough Trade Records site.
