It’s been a lifelong dream for Austin Brown to reside in New York City, where he now lives, but he’s glad he grew up in Texas. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have met his partner-in-crime, Andrew Savage.
“Whatever I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to do it here,” Brown said. “I’d always had that in mind. I’d spent four years in Denton at [University of] North Texas, and I meet Andrew in the dorms — so I’m happy for that — but I was ready to move on. I’ve always loved New York, the history of it and general vibe. It’s the best city in the world.”
As
one-half of funky garage-rock duo Fergus & Geronimo, Savage
followed Brown up to the Empire City. They eventually collaborated, then
formed Parquet Courts.
“I
was up here playing music, doing my own thing. He asked if I’d be
interested in starting something up with him,” Brown said. “We wanted it
to have a different vibe from the other things we had going on. It’s
our first band to start from scratch.”
Although still early, it looks as if Parquet Courts might be the breakthrough both have been looking for:
deeper, wittier and more exciting than the host of vapid Brooklyn bands they are competing against.
The pair released its whip-smart debut, Light Up Gold, over the summer independently, garnering positive buzz on the strength of its tunes.
“That’s
a huge part of why we are proud of it,” Brown said. “We believed in it a
lot and knew it was a good-sounding record. It’s something we wanted to
have our own fingerprints on when it was released to people. We just
trusted ourselves that what we were doing was something that would
connect with people.”
The
only reason Parquet Courts agreed to sign a deal with the New Yorkbased
What’s Your Rupture? label for a nationwide release on Jan. 15 is
because the group had sold out of all the copies it had pressed.
“There’s
labels that were interested that would have been good, and some of them
were pretty huge, but we, as a band, feel a kinship with the bands they
are putting out,” Brown said. “We didn’t need a huge label picking it
up. We were just going to build up a fan base around the music, and
that’s, in fact, why people latched onto it.”
Light Up Gold has
ushered in comparisons to an array of universally acclaimed acts: the
Ramones, Guided by Voices, Wire and Sonic Youth. This might be the start
of something just as special.
“It’s
all really flattering. I like all those bands, and it’s wild to be
considered to sound similar to those,” Brown said. “It’s eclectic. The
theory is, ‘If the song sounds cool, let’s go with it.’ It’s worked
pretty well so far.”
This article appears in Dec 26, 2012 – Jan 1, 2013.