THIS week in Noise Annoys, words from NYC indie rockers Parquet Courts, who play The Limelight 2 in Belfast tonight.
Frequently mentioned in the same breath as Pavement and The Strokes, PC's wiry (and occasionally Wire-y) shape-shifting sound is definitely coming from an artsy, antsy compulsion to communicate via vox/guitars (A Savage & A Brown), bass (S Yeaton) and drums (M Savage).
Their skewed yet reliably melodic electric white boy blues has been documented across four well-received LPs to date, including last year's contrasting pair Sunbathing Animals and Content Nausea.
When we spoke last week, bass player Sean was positively amped about playing Belfast for the first time.
"Dude, Belfast is honestly at the top of my list of things I'm excited about – I truly can't wait. I've never been and it's always been a dream of mine to go there. Now I not only get to go, I have the opportunity to play a show there. It's going to be great.
"Everyone in Ireland has been so wonderful, the audiences are always so much fun and the crowds are a blast and I expect the same in Belfast, I think."
You've been touring around the world quite a bit since the release of second album Light Up Gold in 2012, is it still exciting to play in new places?
Oh yeah, that's the best. Festivals are great too, especially because it gives us a chance to catch up with the folks who maybe missed us the last time we were over here or are from somewhere we haven't yet played.
Glastonbury and Reading are kind of like open fairs for people to come and give everything a try. It also kind of takes a lot of pressure off the band I think – there's so much going on it's like a sensory overload a little bit. Those festival shows seem to go by like a flash.
But we'd definitely like to play more club shows too. That's my favourite way to do it.
What about a touring Parquet Courts festival, that could give you the best of both worlds?
Oh yeah, I would love that – we've talked about that before, actually. Like, at SXSW in 2013, we had the opportunity to curate a whole evening of music, with like eight or 10 bands, so it was almost like a mini 'festival within a festival'.
So doing something like that and taking it on the road could be on the cards at some point. It would be a lot of fun.
PC are pretty prolific, having released two very different albums last year. Do you just have a compulsion to release all your songs?
Well, we're pretty traditional in the sense that we believe a rock band's kind of mission is to record a lot of content and tour extensively. I think we do a pretty good job of maintaining both things.
By the end of the Sunbathing Animals sessions, we just happened to have a lot of material that didn't quite fit that vibe of that record – so we just though 'f***, why don't we just put out another one?'
You've got a brand new EP called Monastic Living coming out soon. Will that mark a new period of celibacy for the band?
Hahaha, I hope not! I think it definitely veers into different territory for us though – though maybe not so much for people who have seen us before
Sonically, I think it captures a lot of the energy we have when we play live, so it's a lot different than our previous studio albums, I think. I'm sure it will sort of stand alone in that way because we've been working on a lot of music this past year, which is all gonna come out in a bunch of different formats – LPs and splits and who knows what!
It's going to be a crazy bunch of releases for us next year.
:: Parquet Courts, tonight, The Limelight 2, Belfast, 7pm. Tickets £14 on the door or via Ticketmaster outlets.
