Keep Brooklyn Weird
Parquet Courts have been compared to Wire, Television, the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, Sonic Youth, the Feelies, the Fall, Minor Threat, Flipper, Guided by Voices, Archers of Loaf, Silkworm, of course Pavement, and I could go on.
Parquet Courts have been compared to Wire, Television, the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, Sonic Youth, the Feelies, the Fall, Minor Threat, Flipper, Guided by Voices, Archers of Loaf, Silkworm, of course Pavement, and I could go on. Even more than most indie bands, these Texan/Brooklynese garage-rockers tempt the comparison game so shamelessly it’s as if they were designed specifically to induce critics into frothing at the mouth. There’s something in their sound that bows humbly to a whole hallowed tradition of noisy alternative rock, not just in their metallic textures but in the deranged motion of the rhythm section. There’s something in the way their fuzzy guitar interludes crash through the mix, hissing and squealing like a nest of electric snakes, that makes you wonder whether they’re poking fun at countless other aspiring punks, parodying the distortion that has become a garden-variety distancing strategy. Except they’re also serious, because their distortion also sounds great. This is one chaotic, entertaining band.
Having first made a modest name for himself in the alternative rock world with the amusing, experimental group Fergus & Geronimo, songwriter/frontman Andrew Savage began Parquet Courts with a few other Brooklyn-located former Texans, including singing partner Austin Brown. Like most aspiring indie bands, they gradually gained notoriety and respect through the inordinate number of live gigs they played, eventually releasing a debut album in 2011 called American Specialties, available only on cassette. Once they managed to get their more official Light Up Gold album and their five-song Tally All the Things That You Broke EP released on the small but esteemed Brooklyn label What’s Your Rupture? (January and October 2013, respectively), they became a hot topic among quite a few rock journalists, who quickly fell for the playful guitar machinery and witty songwriting that characterized their music. Light Up Gold was an acclaimed critical favorite by year’s end, coming in at #40 on Pitchfork‘s album list, #11 on Rolling Stone‘s, #24 in the Village Voice‘s comprehensive Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, etc. Wasting no time concocting a follow-up, they released 2014’s Sunbathing Animal in June. Although both albums inhabit the crazed slacker-rock they’ve made their own, each is distinct; Light Up Gold is shorter, faster, sharper, while the heavier Sunbathing Animal sounds rusty, sunbaked. Both rock out in weird, compelling ways.
Neither of these records would have attracted so many admirers if not for an instantly recognizable musical signature. Depicting a heroic rodeo daredevil, the Light Up Gold album cover evokes their style perfectly, wherein a stringy guitar sound captures the frantic, galloping charge of what looks like a bucking cow, the latter trying desperately to shake off the rider on its back. But their songs are also spare enough to reach a certain level of arch abstraction, an apparent golden mean of neominimalist punk. If you’ll excuse yet another comparison, call Parquet Courts the garage-rock Wilco, doing for guitar splatter noise what Jeff Tweedy & Co. do for American roots music. Constantly making reference to other bands, branching out into arcane genre jokes, devising fragments as coherent as their full-length songs, they subsume ringing guitar riffs, crunchy rhythm strumming, mangled drums, jittery postpunk rhythms, short punchy anthems, long roundabout rambles, chaotic avant-garde explosions of static, digressive stream-of-consciousness poetry, an extraordinary amount of tension-and-release built into the songwriting, and droningly flat vocals into a broad musical sweep, as if these distinct stylistic traditions are all just indie-rock to them. Hence the numerous comparisons, and hence the critical acclaim: explicitly, this is music for rock nerds. Even for those of us with little to no patience for spot-the-influence parlor games, these distinct stylistic traditions push our pleasure buttons. We can’t help it.
Careening out of the gate with the demented “Master of My Craft,” Light Up Gold was a formalist’s delight, comprising fourteen short, punchy songs in rapid-fire succession. While its tinny, manic guitar scales seemed a little thin, this also lent the album a light, elegant feel, and the concision they achieved ensured a commitment to zippy, loopy energy. By contrast, Sunbathing Animal feels bigger and more substantial, laying on thicker slices of distortion and muscling harder into the rhythms. Just as Light Up Gold was all forward momentum, on Sunbathing Animal the band stretches out a little, expanding the song structures and lengthening the jam breaks. Savage and Brown time their interlocking slices of electric whine with sublime precision, backing their previously established treble sound with lower, dryer, crunchier guitar lines, louder, stronger drums, and the resulting album stampedes out of your speakers in thrashing convulsions where Light Up Gold zoomed in a straight line. They’ve retained their scruffy amateurism, and how could they not, but they’ve given up the sloppy diversionary tricks that indie enthusiasts find so endearing, and their tight control remains undiminished as they casually skate over a messy, raucous, clangy beat that crackles and snorts in time. They make their Texan side more explicit than ever, filtering subtle shades of bluesy Americana into their scratchy jangle. Gradually learning how to express sincere emotion as long as they can act like goofy stoners while they’re doing it, they’ve started writing longer and more comprehensible love songs; the cheerfully dejected “Instant Disassembly” lasts over seven minutes and analyzes the decline of a relationship with imagistic obscurantism and disarming candor. “Black and White” winds a set of buzzing riffs around each other before exploding in a temper tantrum. “What Color Is Blood” bears down on their grand gallop until it wobbles and brays.
Many of the other bands mentioned above, save Wilco, find themselves attracted to anarchic guitar noise as a means of expressing anger. They rock hard because it leads to cathartic release, venting their repressed rage into a distorted roar that destroys everything in its path. Parquet Courts are so much happier than that. They’re bemused, naturally, cheerful, why not, smart and charming and seductive, ah yes, mitigating the harsher edges of their form with dazed humor and friendly melodies. They’ve crafted a warm, shaggy monster of an indie-rock album as a way of celebrating a proudly eccentric indie-rock subculture and the proud eccentrics who populate it. It’s also their tribute to the many baffling noises human beings can wrench out of the electric guitar. Crunch crunch slam slam dinky dinky.
Light Up Gold and Sunbathing Animal are available through amazon.com.
