Parquet Courts
Human Performance
[Rough Trade]
Texan transplants to NYC, Parquet Courts work had previously showcased these outsiders applying a distinctly punk-rock approach to the sounds of various quintessentially New York acts from the Velvet Underground to the Feelies (note for pedants: I know they’re from New Jersey) and, in their poppier moments, even the Strokes. The fingerprints of these bands still dot margins of Parquet Courts’ latest release, but Human Performance is their most sonically singular and, lyrically speaking, most deeply personal and self-analytical record to date. This fact is mirrored in the reappropriation of some of the tones and timbres more readily associated with their home state: the cowpoke guitar licks of Berlin Got Blurry or genuinely toe-tappin’ solo on Pathos Prairie call to mind the open skies of God’s own country.
When their adopted home does impose itself on the record it’s through the cacophonous car horns that squeal through album opener Dust or the incessant chugging of an overhead train that appears on raucous, explicitly political, album highlight Two Dead Cops. The sounds of the city act as uninvited interlopers distorting the pursuit of clarity in understanding the inner workings of one’s own mind, a theme turned to by the band time and time again, perhaps most strikingly on power-pop gem Outside. It takes a truly remarkable band to produce anything this dually intellectually satisfying and bloody good fun.
Like this? Try these:
Swell Maps – Jane from Occupied Europe
Pavement – Wowee Zowee
Protomartyr – The Agent Intellect
Words: Danny Wilson
