Texas native Andrew Savage formed post-punk band Parquet Courts in Brooklyn in 2010 with fellow singer-songwriter-guitarist Austin Brown; the pair met at record-listening club the Knights of the Round Turntable while at the University of North Texas. Parquet Courts released their debut, American Specialties – described by Savage as “the Fall meets Neil Young” – in cassette-only format in 2011. Since then they have released four more albums, one under the name Parkay Quarts. Savage, who studied drawing and painting, does all the artwork for the band’s albums. Their latest, Human Performance, was released earlier this year, and this week the band play in Manchester, London and Brighton.
1 | Book
Diaries: Eva Hesse, edited by Barry Rosen (Hauser & Wirth/Yale)
This beautiful tome collects the diaries of artist Eva Hesse from 1955 until her death in 1970. It is endearingly fragmented; a patchwork of confessional, deeply personal writing spliced with to-do lists, bills and personal memos. The text is formatted to resemble the way it appears on the pages of Hesse’s notebooks, a nice detail that lends a poetic quality to each entry. Through its pages, Hesse struggles with anxieties related to academia, romance and the art world, as well as the suicide of her mother during her childhood. For me, it’s a reminder that even a truly great, canonised artist faced her share of doubt and confusion, as we all should for something that means the world to us.
2 | Album
Crab Day by Cate Le Bon (Drag City)
Cate Le Bon’s songwriting is some of the most exciting around at the moment. Crab Day has the kind of songs that begin as somewhat conventional and recognisable structures, but then, in a very thrilling way, go to a place that is completely unexpected. As a lyricist, she addresses profound emotion with abandon, and her nonchalant syntax belies how urgent and personal her words really are. As a player, I feel like a 12-year-old boy listening to Hendrix in my bedroom, holding my guitar and trying to unlock the puzzle of her phrasing. I still haven’t filed away this LP, because it’s on such frequent rotation at my house.
3 | Gallery
The John Wesley Gallery at the Chinati Foundation
Recently I spent my birthday in Marfa, Texas, a place I find quite alluring and odd. Having seen the Chinati collection in its entirety before, I went to the foundation with the goal of spending some time with Wesley’s paintings in this permanent gallery. I admire so many things about his work, from the technical – the broad fields of sparse, harmonious colour, the fluidity of his line – to the conceptual. I used the opportunity to study Wesley’s craft, and to meditate on the rhythm of his shapes. The gallery itself, formerly a horse stable, uses only the ample natural lighting of west Texas; the tour guides are notoriously knowledgable and happy to talk about the work at length.
4 | TV
I’ve been a fan of this groundbreaking sketch show since it aired in the 90s. From the first episode, which featured a couple purchasing a seemingly normal house outfitted with a “bucket of truth” and a “hot chicks room”, I was hooked – it was just the type of surreal humour I craved. Nobody I went to school with liked the show, but that didn’t matter. In fact it was all the better because it opened a door to a type of shameless silliness I found sorely deficient in my life. All the vignettes, which satirise social norms and embrace all things taboo, collide in the final scene of each episode.I’ve never seen such a daring and conceptual sketch show since.
5 | Food
Some woefully misinformed people consider Tex-Mex to be a corruption of Mexican food rather than a glorious hybrid cuisine influenced by indigenous tradition, war, immigration and limited resources. I say to them: treat yourself to a plate of homemade tamales. Wake up to a breakfast of migas or huevos rancheros. Bullshit with an old friend over chips and salsa and cold beer (which would in fact be my last meal). Living in New York City, I miss Tex-Mex like an amputee misses a limb. Luckily this life of constant touring finds me in Texas quite a bit, a place for which I have feelings that are mixed on just about everything but the food.
6 | Film
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (dir Chantal Akerman, 1975)
Since Akerman passed away last year there have been many great retrospective events celebrating her, and I saw this at the Film Forum in New York earlier this summer. Jeanne Dielman is a woman stuck in a banal cycle of housekeeping, making meals for her son and prostituting herself in her tiny flat. The film takes place over three days and there isn’t much difference in each day’s regimen of tasks; as a viewer, you’re forced into the severe and relentless dullness that is Jeanne’s life. It’s hard to recommend a film that has very little dialogue, and is essentially three hours of a woman cleaning a small apartment, but for those brave enough to see it through to the climactic final scene, it was possibly the most exhilarating experience I’ve had in a movie theatre. Worth it? Absolutely.
7 | Music video
Terry is a band of four wonderful and talented Aussies. Their personnel is drawn from some of Melbourne’s best and brightest underground bands, including Total Control and the UV Race. I adore this new video clip, Hot Heads, directed by Tim Hillier, Mia McDonald and the band. I always enjoy music videos where you can tell everyone involved was having a great time. I love the costumes, the choreography, I love lipstick-wearing Al Montfort trying to push back a smile as he plays a Casio [keyboard] in front of western line dancers. Australia is producing some of the best rock’n’roll on planet Earth these days, and Terry are only further evidence of that.
