“These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” from Content Nausea by Parquet Courts
Content Nausea, Parkay Quarts’ second release of 2014, is the inevitable repercussion to Sunbathing Animal’s pure emotion. With one member completing a degree in mathematics, and another starting a family, Content Nauseafeatures mostly the work of Savage and Brown, with the help of a few friends (Jackie-O Motherfucker’s Jef Brown on Saxaphone and Eaters’ Bob Jones on fiddle). This likely explains the homophonic name shift, which was previously used last years’ “Tally All the Things That You Broke”. Featuring some of the bands most accessible and dissonant recordings, “Content Nausea” was recorded, mixed and mastered in two weeks on a 4-track tape machine. The band wanted something that listeners could “live with over the winter”. At 35 minutes, the record lies somewhere between an EP and an LP, but who’s counting? On Content Nausea, we find the band confidently exploring sounds that were previously only hinted at; Townes Van Zandt and Dylan are evident points of departure on “Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth”, a lonesome tale about “two men tragically colliding in the deep south”, explains Savage. The 13th Floor Elevators get a hat tip via NYC reinterpretation of “Slide Machine”, and there’s even an unexpected, gender-bending cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking”. “A personal karaoke standard”, explains Savage. Mostly, Content Nausea reflects the rapid change in the band’s hometown of New York City, while at the same time emphasizing the changes in the band itself. The record’s sleeve is a bleak vision of Freedom-Tower-era NYC flooded by (what else?) content. A city that is becoming increasingly unrecognizable to its romantic history. Not unlike Parkay Quarts