Parts & Labor went all out for their first album in 15 years. Set of All Sets, released on July 10, is a one hour and 21 minute ride through 17 tracks that begins with a proggy overture and builds into rollicking noise rock augmented by two drummers and tempered with synth flourishes and interludes. That the band, who emerged from early 2000s Brooklyn, reconvened at all is no small feat considering that the members are now spread from coast to coast. That they managed to make such an ambitious album is all the more rare.
“The kind of maximalist approach really makes this stand out to us,” says Christopher Weingarten, drummer for Parts & Labor. “The hooks are so giant. The noise is so noisy. There are two drummers on it. It feels bigger. There are two discs. It’s huge.”
Active between 2002 and 2012, the band formed around the songwriting core of Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw. Weingarten joined the fold in 2004. After his departure a few years later, Joe Wong stepped in on the drums. The four make up this current incarnation of Parts & Labor.
“We were always friends. I didn’t leave on bad terms,” says Weingarten. “I was friends with the drummer who replaced me, so we all just kept in touch and would trade group chats and hanging out in the group chats and trading band jokes. It kind of evolved from there.”
However, there is a physical distance between the members of Parts & Labor now. Weingarten and Wong both moved out to Los Angeles. Friel still lives in Brooklyn, but Warshaw lives in North Carolina. As Weingarten explains, Friel and Warshaw knocked out the demos on their own and then the band met up in Joshua Tree. “The four of us got together and had a lost weekend in Joshua Tree recording drums and hanging out and doing the thing,” he says. “Being incredibly productive, to the point where it’s not only a double LP, but there is way more material that we didn’t use. It was a lot.”
And they managed to have enough time to experiment in the studio too. At one point, Weingarten worked out a solo that had been in his head for possible use on the album. “Dan surprised me and, without asking, took my piece, cut it up into little shards and made the song ‘Anti-Lions and Lemonade’ around this piece,” he recalls. “It was a very nice surprise that came from an idea that I wanted to realize.”
Parts & Labor actually debuted the two-drummer lineup at their penultimate show in 2012, but this was the first time that they recorded with both Weingarten and Wong on drums. “For those shows, we were playing the same thing. For this record, there are different parts. You do this and I do this,” says Weingarten. “That element has been really cool because we’re totally different types of drummers, so we’re playing off each other’s strengths and trying not to get in the way.”
That rhythmic heaviness lends a frenetic energy to the album that’s very much like being at a MySpace-era DIY show and acknowledges the band’s history. Weingarten, who got more active in music after hearing bands like Lightning Bolt, The Locust and Arab on Radar, describes the climate at the time he joined Parts & Labor.
“When I joined the band in 2004, it was the middle of the Iraq War and the surveillance state and capitalism run amok and that was reflected in the lyrics on Stay Afraid,” he says, referencing the band’s sophomore album.
Set of All Sets comes in the midst of an era that feels eerily familiar to many who remember the ‘00s. “Living now is really bleak and ironic,” Weingarten says, likening today’s world to both Winston Smith’s album art for the Dead Kennedys and Jim Jarmusch’s film, The Dead Don’t Die. “ In ’04, there was this really passionate explosion of protest against all the ills that were happening and now it’s just this muted resignation and snark and sadness,” he says. “ In one sense, it’s very much like living through the ‘00s, but, in another, it’s completely different. It’s the same poison, just a different taste.”
Like the DIY bands that sprouted up in U.S. cities throughout the first decade of the 21st century, Parts & Labor represent both the beginning and end of an era.Technology was accessible enough to make it easier to record, to connect with far-flung scenes and to document what you were doing. However, we weren’t yet living in an attention economy.
“The attention economy has a very weird chilling effect on music. I can see the cracks begin to open around when Soulja Boy was on MySpace and Lil Wayne was doing mixtapes and it was this constant stream of music from these guys,” says Weingarten. “People got so used to that model of, this artist I like has something for me every other day, and, back in our days, in the early ‘00s, you made a 7” or a tape and that was your statement.”
Consider Set of All Sets Parts & Labor’s latest statement. One that they’ll follow up with just a few shows. For the L.A. crowd, they’ll play Zebulon on July 24 with support from HLLLYH (ex-The Mae Shi) and Molly Horses. Set of All Sets is available now on Bandcamp.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
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