Human Performance
2016 studio album by Parquet Courts

Human Performance is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band Parquet Courts, released on April 8, 2016 on Rough Trade Records.
The album was preceded by the singles "Dust", "Berlin Got Blurry", "Outside", and "Human Performance". It received a nomination for Best Recording Package at the 2017 Grammy Awards.
Background and recording
The band wrote much of Human Performance while recording the album at Dreamland Recording Studios in Hurley, New York, New York: "We were living there, working around the clock, and there was never any time where we couldn’t be loud. It created an environment where we all encouraged each other to explore." Vocalist and guitarist Andrew Savage likened the experience to recording The Beatles' White Album: "I imagine it’s what recording [that album] would’ve been like except the whole band was getting along and nobody’s girlfriend was there."
Artwork
Receiving a nomination for Best Recording Package at the 2017 Grammy Awards, the album's artwork is by co-lead vocalist and guitarist A. Savage. Regarding its cover art, Savage noted: "I painted that in my own separate state of mind. I do a lot of artwork that has nothing to do with Parquet Courts, but it was around the same time that I started working on the Human Performance art, and it kind of just started screaming at me from the corner.
The public source identifies “Human Performance” as 2016 studio album by Parquet Courts. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Human, Performance and studio.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q23044926. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Human Performance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.