The World Without Parking Lots - You’ll Have To Take My Word For It (2022)

The work of songwriter and composer Ethan T. Parcell could hardly be more diverse. Recording under his own name, moniker The World Without Parking Lots and Focus Group LLC/Solutions, Parcell’s output has traversed the gamut from hushed solo folk to free jazz with a thirteen-piece orchestra, and his use of narrative has been similarly inventive. From the personal dispatches of Seventh Song Counts the Engines (what we called “bummed out bedroom folk songs for the twenty-first century”) to bona fide operas, and then the startlingly ambitious and evocative hybrid narrative that was The New County Choruses, Parcell has pushed the boundaries of songwriting as far as anyone within the contemporary scene.

But Parcell’s experimentation always remains rooted in a sense of emotional honesty, and for all his innovation, it is this commitment to sincerity and modesty which shines as the most notable feature. Boundary pushing not as some search for novelty or exercise in aesthetic formulation, but a way to more fully communicate what lies at the heart of the work. A deep, varied engagement with ideas of sincerity and humbleness which stands as proof that within compassion lies genuine artistic and political utility.

Within this wider mission, releases under the The World Without Parking Lots moniker have tended to lean toward the intimate, straightforward folk end of Parcell’s body of work. Songs more overtly personal which position themselves alongside acts like Mount Eerie or Talons’. The trend continues on You’ll Have To Take My Word For It, a brand new TWWPL album out next month on Dear Life Records featuring intimate, domestic songs which are characteristically humane.

The new album is the result of four unique operas co-produced by Parcell with Focus Group LLC / Solutions, the New County Choruses, a collection of recently narrated and corrupt folk song writing. ‘You’ll Have To Take My Word For It is the most condensed work of Parcell ’s songwriting. A collection of completely humble and homely songs that gives a short expression of evacuation and comfort to the home and family.