Parkay Quarts: "Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth"

Parquet Courts have made no secret of their love for slow, broken-down music that conjures America’s lonely corners: Witness “North Dakota” from last year’s Light Up Gold or the more recent “Instant Disassembly” from Sunbathing Animal, or the fact that co-frontman Andrew Savage has on occasion borrowed stage banter from Townes Van Zandt, a Texan singer whose songs seem to have been beamed in from a quiet place near the edge of nowhere.

This week, the band—or at least a portion of it—announced an album called Content Nausea, attributed to stated “alter-ego” Parkay Quarts. (For those following along with their lineup, Nausea features Savage as well as other co-frontman and guitarist Austin Brown, in addition to a rotating group of friends.) “Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth”, which originally had life as a song with Savage’s old band, Teenage Cool Kids, unfurls with the waning grandeur of a sunset—a heavy, lyric-driven piece of music that seems to circle endlessly, a long fade from a band that has often made a point of stopping on a dime.

As is his proclivity, Savage’s writing is part King’s English and part saloon jive, part solid object and part metaphor: “I stood there beside my companion, scratching a rumor he had heard/ ‘Do you have a gun?’ ‘What?’ He said, ‘yeah, you mean this one?’ Straight down the barrel was his word.” And thenceforth toward the horizon, spurs jangling all the way.

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