Photo Credit: Pooneh Ghana

Next Thursday sees the return of Brooklyn’s finest Parquet Courts to Birmingham, where they will be playing the main room of the O2 Institute. Hot off the back of latest album “Sympathy For Life” and ten years after breakout record “Light Up Gold“, its sure to be a celebration of new and old.

New album “Sympathy For Life” was built largely from improvised jams and produced in league with Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Hot Chip, David Byrne) and John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, Dry Cleaning). Unlike its globally adored predecessor, 2018’s “Wide Awake!“, the focus fell on grooves rather than rhythm. “Most of the songs were created by taking long improvisations and moulding them through our own editing,” explains Austin Brown. “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.” In a very real sense, the band sampled themselves, molding and chopping their rhythmic and melodic jams to create these songs, to manifest something new.