Parquet Courts - Sonic Underground

In Brooklyn things still seem to happen today at a speed and frequency unknown anywhere else in the world: from there come some of the most interesting names of recent times, just think of the breakthroughs of projects such as San Fermin, Big Ups, Hospitality or The Men. Parquet Courts, Texans transplanted to the Big Apple, are certainly one of the most brilliant examples of this.

Their story kicks off in 2011, and already within that same year the results of their first attempts were captured on a limited-run self-produced cassette, American Specialties, which would go on to become a true cult object for present and future fans. Besides playing a fine blend of garage-rock and post-punk, the four of them had fun assembling mix-tapes that they shared through their own blog. One of these, titled “By Who Power?”, set out to map the band's spectrum of influences: a glorious mess including Fall and GG Allin, Pavement and Guided By Voices, Neil Young and Beat Happening.

But people really started talking about the band's original material when Parquet Courts released Light Up Gold, originally issued in just five hundred copies (which sold out instantly) in August 2012 on their own small label, Dull Tools, and later reissued by New York imprint What's Your Rupture? in January of the following year.

Light Up Gold is doubly tied to the nervy, dissonant New York of the Velvet Underground, and to that of early punk and Sonic Youth. But much more vibrates in the strings of the band's two singer-songwriters, Andrew Savage (voice, guitar, and already half of Fergus & Geronimo) and Austin Brown (voice, guitar), starting from angular, geometric post-punk riffing and chord reiterations stamped with the Modern Lovers' mark, not shying away from noise that recalls Neil Young. The solid rhythm section made up of Sean Yeaton (bass) and Max Savage (drums, the leader's brother) sounds straightforward compared to the volcanic clash/encounter between the two six-strings, perfectly functional in keeping steady songs that seem like they could collapse at any moment yet instead reveal razor-precise interlocking parts. Just another of Parquet Courts' contrasts: a band that writes music in which melody seems to arrive by chance, almost swept up by the intensity of the performance, yet never forgets, despite everything, to be singable.

Just think of the stunning miniature anthems penned by Savage, shards lasting at most two minutes like “Borrowed Time”, “Donuts Only”, “Light Up Gold”, “Disney P.T.” or “Yonder Is Closer To The Heart”, offspring of the admirable conciseness of Wire's “Pink Flag” and the jamming econo of Mike Watt, which here is reworked into patterns reminiscent of fIREHOSE stripped of their jazz-funk side. For his part, Austin opens the album with “Master Of My Craft”, another highlight of the collection, with Feelies-like rhythms, headlong guitars and possessed preaching. A further strength of Light Up Gold is its ability to venture into other territories without losing cohesion, and indeed while keeping strong personal traits, even as it lays its influences bare: “Yr No Stoner”, “Careers In Combat” and “No Ideas” are pure distilled Pavement circa “Slanted & Enchanted”, and yet the band's hard-working philosophy couldn't be further from that slacker ethic. Likewise, “Caster Of Worthless Spells” and the slow burn of “Picture Of Health” would be worthy additions to the vast Guided By Voices catalogue. In between these quick flare-ups, meanwhile, rises the galloping “Stoned And Starving”, in which a kraut rhythm leaves the guitars free to intertwine, drifting just past the five-minute mark, with Savage recounting, with a taste for punk mockery, a late-night food quest (“swedish fish, roasted peanuts or licorice”).

After earning glowing reviews and wrapping up the usual run of shows, the four returned to the studio to work on the songs meant to push the band even higher. The urgency to create something new quickly resulted in five new compositions on the EP Tally All The Things That You Broke. It's the ideal bridge between what the band had been up to that point and what it would become, in which short, concise tracks alternate (and this is the real novelty) with more structured, free-form digressions, culminating in the over seven minutes of unexpected noise-funk that close the record, “He's Seeing Paths”.

Parquet Courts prove once again to be masters at blending Fall, Wire and Minutemen together, managing to fuse the proto-punk New York of the Velvet Underground with the alt-noise New York of early Sonic Youth, a masterful synthesis that keeps burning tirelessly through the first two tracks, “You've Got Me Wonderin' Now” and “Descend (The Way)”, longtime favorites among the band's earliest fans.

The same flammable mixture, perfectly balanced between flashes of beauty and bilious outbursts, returns on the follow-up, Sunbathing Animal, released on June 3, 2014. Recorded over eight months across three sessions that also yielded the Ep Tally All The Things That You Broke, the new album nonetheless distances itself from its excellent predecessor. Where everything seemed to rest on the formidable kinetic energy the band unleashed in miniature anthems in the style of early Wire, here the formula broadens and reveals just how far the quartet's horizons can stretch. There's plenty of New York again, and of the historic kind: the chord repetitions of the Velvet Underground, the psychotic groove of Talking Heads's More Songs About Buildings And Food, the retractable rock'n'roll of the Voidoids. And then decisive influences from Minutemen, Wire (them again) and the Modern Lovers, mentors in both form and substance, while at certain points even the off-key imps of the Kirkwood brothers' "Up On The Sun" seem to materialize.

Plenty of names and influences, yet the result is purely and simply Parquet Courts, starting with the monstrous title track, a clattering four-minute proto-hardcore number played with the purple-faced fury of a D. Boon and built on a single chord, much like the pummeling "Ducking And Dodging"; both are hugely effective because, as the frontman puts it, "when you keep things that well defined and stripped down, you get the chance to do a lot more with voice and guitar."

The distance from Light Up Gold is marked right from the languid rhythm of the opener "Bodies Made Of", where the contrast between the vocal delivery and the dissonant interplay of electric guitars is superb, and from the lolloping Malkmus-isms of "Dear Ramona". Elsewhere, though, the band sticks closer to its recent path, as in "Black And White", the unstoppable "Always Back In Town", the scant minute of "Vienna II" (oddly dedicated to the Second Viennese School founded by Arnold Schoenberg), and the neurotic groove of "What Color Is Blood", something the young Byrne would have been proud of. The real surprises on Sunbathing Animal, however, lie in the sprawl of "She's Rolling" and "Instant Disassembly", slow-moving wanderings that together span almost fourteen minutes: the first is a jam that sounds like Crazy Horse grappling with some abandoned traditional, suddenly pierced by the frenzied harmonica of Lea Cho of Blues Control; the second, another highlight of the record, is a slow pseudo-ballad that burns under a scorching sun, built on the repetition of a single irresistible riff.

Just when you think the record has already given enough, you run into the raw blues of "Raw Milk", which fades into the close of "Into The Garden", two minutes of electric scraping and a crooked, sweet melody for voice, guitar and piano chords. Just a hint, as if unwilling to appear too vulnerable, yet the heart is laid bare all the same. With the thirteen tracks of Sunbathing Animal, Parquet Courts definitively confirm themselves as a front-rank act in constant evolution, willing to lose their balance in pursuit of a burning inspiration, distilled into one of the very best records of 2014.

But the year doesn't end there, because the band doesn't let up, continuing to ride the wave of their sudden notoriety on the global underground circuit. In late 2014, a release credited to Parkay Quarts arrives, the excellent Content Nausea, though it's effectively still them under a different name. Meanwhile, they scatter the globe with tight, devastating live sets, passing through our own peninsula too.

Towards the end of 2015 comes a new, almost entirely instrumental record (officially presented, for some reason, as an Ep), which highlights their more experimental-noise side. On these tracks the band pours out the results of sessions where they let themselves be carried away by the urge to play with no preset script, reins loose, guitars and electronics chasing each other to sketch out inextricable walls of sound, with the attitude of a band that wants to take risks on one hand, and good-naturedly mess with the listener on the other.

Monastic Living comes out on Rough Trade, a debut for the label we might have imagined turning out differently, but Parquet Courts seize the chance to throw everyone off: hence a total absence of "songs", replaced by a calculated alternation between brief, minute-or-so noise lashings ("Elegy Of Colonial Suffering" and "Frog Pond Plod" are children of early-80s Sonic Youth) and long digressions built on repetition ("Vow Of Silence" even manages to combine kraut and shoegaze). Feedback grafted onto endless loops, assorted noisemaking, expressive freedom running rampant, and a gem placed right at the opening, the healthy madness of the concise, effective "No, No, No!", the only pseudo-sung flash on the record. Then another 33 minutes of intransigence that run just the risk of boring fans unaccustomed to more avant-garde forms of rock.

Monastic Living is a bold work, one that leaves us curious to see the New York band's next moves, to find out which worlds they'll choose to explore next: whether to focus on writing a new "Sunbathing Animal" or head somewhere else entirely, somewhere no one would have expected.

The answer arrives in early April 2016, with the release of Human Performance, which shows a band moving toward greater accessibility, bolstered by a song format that's grown a touch craftier, yet remains as effective and dissonant as ever, right from the opening "Dust". Parquet Courts once again prove to possess a rare gift for reinterpreting and fusing the various musical eras that defined their hometown, New York. They spin together sixties Velvet Underground psychedelia ("Steady On My Mind", the long coda of "Ona Man, No City") and the nineties noise attitude of Sonic Youth ("I Was Just Here"), adding flashes of indie Strokes-style swagger ("Outside") tinged with the post-hardcore of Fugazi ("Paraphrased"), the oblique college-rock of Pavement (the brilliant "Keep It Even", where guest Jeff Tweedy's guitar is unmistakable), and even a fun, rhythmic touch of Tex-Mex ("Berlin Got Blurry"). It's all filtered through a personality that currently has no equal on the global alternative circuit, contained within songwriting that, album after album, keeps its distinctive traits intact while edging toward slightly greater conformity.

2017 brings the realization of a project shared with Daniele Luppi, Milan, a tribute to the 1980s of the Lombard capital featuring Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on four tracks. A work devoid of the soundtrack-like qualities of "Rome" (Luppi's previous work) and strongly centered on the role of the guitars, built in ways so typically Parquet Courts that the Italian composer's presence is almost imperceptible, except for the closing instrumental jazz jam "Café Flesh" and the hyper-cool finale of "Mount Napoleon", embellished by a sax redolent of "Walk On The Wild Side". Within Milan, the perfect synthesis of Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth resurfaces on the opening "Soul And Cigarette", with those little bells so reminiscent of "Sunday Morning", and the admirable bass-guitar interplay that elevates "Flush", crowned by a lovely closing section that brings with it a slight noise drift.

Almost simultaneously, Andrew Savage releases his own solo debut, Thawing Dawn, with a decidedly more singer-songwriter-oriented feel.

On May 18, 2018, with Danger Mouse at the helm, out comes Wide Awake!, which confirms the band is in great shape and increasingly omnivorous across the board: while the opening "Total Football" speaks a broadly punk-oriented language, linking back to previous records, further on there's no shortage of surprises and shifts in register. In particular, Parquet Courts once again show they can marry the rhythm of urban funk (the viciousness etched into "Violence") with the expressive urgency of garage rock, as in the superb "Almost Had To Start A Fight / In And Out Of Patience", essentially two songs in one, partly captured live. Both the oblique, Pavement-derived Americana of "Mardi Gras Beads" and "Freebird II" and the post-hardcore flashes fusing Fugazi and Husker Du -- filtered through the gift for synthesis that once belonged to Minutemen -- survive intact, boldly taking shape first in "Normalization" and shortly after in the one-two punch of "NYC Observation" / "Extinction", which gives a nice jolt to the record's closing stretch. But this time around we also find festive disco-funk drifts introduced by the lead single, which, not coincidentally, lends its title to the whole album.

Also in 2018, Austin Brown takes on production duties for one of New York's most interesting new bands, Bodega, a young quintet that draws unmistakably from the same sonic roots as Parquet Courts. Brown thus puts his stamp on one of the year's best alt-rock debuts, Endless Scroll.

Held back by the pandemic, which put the entire music industry in serious difficulty, in 2021 Parquet Courts mark their tenth anniversary by putting together a small gift for their fans: the reissue of their first self-produced cassette, American Specialties, originally distributed on the sly at the start of their career. A nostalgic glance back at those first steps, but right after it comes a new one taken decisively forward, finally delivering a follow-up, after more than three years, to "Wide Awake!".

The ambition -- stated by the band themselves -- is to let themselves be "contaminated" by the dancefloor and make a party record: the refinement of the path embarked upon precisely with "Wide Awake!", which nonetheless showed some uncertainty about which direction to take, only hinting at the group's desire to broaden its horizons and move toward a more "danceable" song format.

A synthesis of lengthy studio improvisations, Sympathy For Life, released on October 15, 2021, proves to be the band's most varied and accessible work to date, a goldmine from which to pull more than one track to liven up any "alternative" DJ set, almost a sort of latter-day "Screamadelica". The chosen arrangements place emphasis on the electronic parts, and look firmly to the Talking Heads experience of "Remain In Light", the most fitting term of comparison for decoding compositions like "Marathon Of Anger", where even the vocal lines are built to approximate the style of David Byrne, or "Plant Life", with its afrobeat percussion, driving bass and a sweeping instrumental coda that practically turns it into a megamix of itself.

The New York quartet's stylistic evolution is also highlighted by the digital minimalism with a Teutonic flavor (did someone say kraut?) grafted onto the bass movements in "Application Apparatus", in the pronounced melodic lines of "Just Shadows" and in the elegant dance-funk mode of the title track. But Sympathy For Life is a record that looks toward groove without ever forgetting the band's roots. Attention to tradition is guaranteed by the very Stooges/Stones guitar approach of "Homo Sapien", by the impetuous electricity expressed in the effective opener "Walking At A Downtown Pace" and by the slightly sweetened garage-punk of "Black Widow Spider". A shame about the dip in the closing stretch, which nonetheless doesn't undermine the intent to steer the band's sound toward new shores.

In 2023, with the collaboration of John Parish and Cate Le Bon, A. Savage releases a second solo album decidedly more ambitious than his bare-bones debut, Several Songs About Fire, a record that only half-convinces both audiences and critics.

Well regarded in alternative circles for their innate ability to blend together two important New Yorks of the past - the proto-punk of Velvet Underground and the alt-noise of Sonic Youth - Parquet Courts have, album after album, come to develop their own distinct personality, pushing with Wide Awake! and Sympathy For Life into new territory, while never forgetting the importance of staying accessible. Renewing, and consolidating, their well-earned place in the narrow circle of reference bands for the American alt-rock scene of the 2010s.

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