Through all their success, Parquet Courts have kept pretty tight control of their music. Andrew Savage, one of the post-punk band’s two singer-guitarists, does all the album art; Austin Brown, the other, produced and mixed their great fifth album Human Performance. For their as-yet-untitled sixth, they’ve enlisted a big-name outside producer for the first time: Danger Mouse, whose recent credits include records for Red Hot Chili Peppers, ASAP Rocky, and U2.
The band mentioned working with Danger Mouse in a recent interview with the British music magazine Q (the article isn’t online, but you can see a snippet on Instagram), and a spokesperson for the band confirmed to Spin that the Grey Album mastermind will be producing their next album. As Stereogum points out, some Parquet Courts fans recently received a postcard with art by Savage and the URL wideawake.am. That website displays a countdown clock that will end at 10 a.m. next Thursday, February 22. It seems likely that the official album announcement will come then.
In a December interview, Savage called the new album “raw” and influenced by hardcore punk: “I didn’t write any love songs [for it]; it’s all rippers,” he told DIY Magazine. Danger Mouse is an unexpected choice to bring such a record to fruition, considering his recent track record with arena-rock heavyweights and his fondness for vintage synths and spaghetti western string sections. But there’s an easy six degrees of separation between him and the Brooklyn band: Parquet Courts recently collaborated with the Italian composer Danielle Luppi on the 2017 album MILANO; Luppi has worked with Danger Mouse on projects for Gnarls Barkley and the Chili Peppers, as well as on Luppi’s previous album Rome. It’s hard to imagine a staunchly DIY bad like Parquet Courts would cede production without good reason. Maybe we’ll hear a song from the album next week.