Parquet Courts returned last month with the heavily improvised track “Plant Life” and the news of their forthcoming album Sympathy for Life, which will be out October 22 on Rough Trade. Today, they have a new song called “Walking at a Downtown Pace” with a video by photographer Daniel Arnold.
The video (along with the reflective lyrics) capture the concrete chaos of NYC—a woman picking watermelon up off the bodega floor, a rat, people dancing in Washington Square Park, people eating pizza in a cab, fashion, another rat, some seemingly drunk-ass folks, a Michael Myers mask on a construction vehicle, a garbage trucks crush a washer-dryer, lots of dancing…you know, NYC stuff.
In a press statement, the band’s A Savage said: “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.”
Watch it below and pre-order the album here.
