Day After Day #208: What Color is Blood?

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

What Color is Blood? (2014)

Last week, I wrote about one of my favorite current artists, Jeff Rosenstock. Another band that I've really taken to over the last decade-plus is Parquet Courts. 

Currently based in NYC, the band was started by Andrew Savage and Austin Brown, who were both students at the University of North Texas in Denton. Andrew's brother Max was a drummer and the three of them relocated to Brooklyn after college and added bassist Sean Yeaton to form Parquet Courts in 2010. 

Their debut album, 2011's American Specialties, was released as a cassette. I first heard them two years later when their 2012 album Light Up Gold was reissued on What's Your Rupture? and caught some attention, especially the songs "Stoned and Starving" and "Borrowed Time." The band's post-punk sound was familiar but fresh, combining literate lyrics with punchy hooks. I picked up the EP Tally All the Things That You Broke (released under the name Parkay Quarts) that fall and dug it as well.

They were getting a lot of Pavement comparisons, which I didn't really hear; to me, they sounded like CBGB-era Television, which I completely dug. In 2014, Parquet Courts released Sunbathing Animal in June and I saw them at TT the Bears (R.I.P.) a few weeks later, headlining a show with another hot new act, Protomartyr, opening up. PC totally ripped it up, with Andrew Savage handling lead vocals on most songs and Brown taking a few. 

On the new album, the band was very conscious to avoid making Light Up Gold 2. They tried not to wear their influences on their proverbial sleeves, exploring different sounds and tempos while still rocking out and also moving away from the stoner/slacker tag that some were putting on them. On "What Color is Blood?" Parquet Courts dug into a midtempo jam as Andrew Savage sings about looking inward, literally.

"What color is blood? Still the same that it was?/Is it still good at what it does?/'Cause I've been needing a new vein line/Going from my guts to my heart to my mind/What's sharp as a knife, followed me all my life/Waits, never rests, til it eats me alive?/Snarlin', darlin', I don't fear nothing/Gushing, I can hear myself leak/I'm roaming outside of the signal/Where it slips in and out/Charges apply, but your heart beats louder/Beyond the dominion of doubt/Excuse me as I slip on out."

The song chugs along as Savage keeps asking questions.

"How is agency built in a life unfulfilled?/Tanned slow and low in the amines of guilt/Hung, stretched, beaten and dried like skin/Smooth, new and shiny but so paper-thin/What tastes like betrayal, gazes naked and pale?/Sneaks into you like it got outta jail?/The blues creeping down you from your head to your tail/The kind that don't let you sing along/I'm listening to a different station/Frequent on a different band/Slightly harder to find but with tuning and time/You won't touch that dial again/Excuse me as I slip on out."

Brown drops a hot guitar solo down before the song wraps up.

Sunbathing Animal got mostly good reviews (it was my favorite album of 2014, for whatever that's worth) and got up to #55 on the Billboard 200 chart. Parquet Courts didn't rest on their laurels, releasing Content Nausea in the fall of 2014 (also under the name Parkay Quarts; Yeaton and Max Savage didn't play on it because of other commitments). The band has continued to release excellent music, with three more studio albums and a collaboration with Italian composer Danielle Luppi from 2016 to 2021, exploring different sounds like dance music. Andrew Savage has also released two solo albums, including last year's Several Songs About Fire.

Although they haven't released an album in three years, Andrew Savage said last year Parquet Courts is still together and will record again in the future.