Final Rating : 8.5/10
This is Parquet Courts sixth album and I must say, it’s a pretty rad one. This is very Indie Rock, and mainly consists of a looser vocal style to it. I believe what truly makes this album as sweet as it is, would be the guitar riffs. I can’t even explain how awesome the riffs are in this song, it is truly a variety that is rarely seen. Each riff has its own personality and style, and I just think its so beyond clever and kept me so interested and wanting more after each track. I just kept wondering to myself wow, I wonder what the next will sound like. When I got on the last track I went to skip to the next one, then realized it was over. I could have listened to that for hours.
Already Dead (digital only) was such a cool and somewhat futuristic opening. I thought it was really unique how laid back it was considering most albums attempt start off with a “bang”. With this being said, I think the “bang” in this opening was how laid back the song was. It had a cool extended interlude including a girl speaking inspirational words such as “With your eyes open or closed take a moment to connect with where you are”. This continued with more messages like so, to a cool indie beat, then a repeated chorus. That was one of the coolest opening tracks I’ve heard in a while. I think they take a lot of inspiration from other artists on this album and are very diverse, you see his vocal styles go to many different places. The song Dust really reminded me of White Lies with the way he sang. There were definitely some interesting layering within the vocals that added for a very grunge vibe. “Dust is everywhere, sweet but I like it” was somewhat repetitive, but I actually think it worked. It ended psychedelically fading out of indie rock guitar into some electronics and piano.
In Human Performance, I really don’t like the echoing of his vocals throughout the track; it kind of threw me off. However, I do think this is a pretty intimate track with some honest lyrics like “I know I loved you, did I even desrve it, when you returned it?”. I think he’s slightly over-aiming here with vocal pitch and tries to disguise it by adding in the echoing, but it just doesn’t really do the trick. With that being said, I still really do enjoy this song because of its intimacy and intensity, especially within bass.
Outside did not particularly stand out to me but I Was Just Here totally did. This strongly reminded me of a Swans track, it sounded extremely similar and Swans inspired. I don’t mean this in a negative way. I loved the abrupt instrumentals and rougher sounding vocals; this made it have an extremely dark vibe, and Swans similarity.
Paraphrased had a cool bridge and awesome vocal variety within the song, when it has the two vocalists going back and forth it just all sounded so well together. I was very impressed by this track.
I thought two very fun tunes on this album were Captive of the Sun and One Man No City. Captive had an awesome guitar introduction and build up into the song, as well as slow guitar overlapping a faster guitar rhythym. I really enjoyed the inclusion of bongos withing this song, it made it have a really fun rhythm.
My favourite track on this was Two Dead Cops. This was a very fun and upbeat song, and I admire how the pitch of the song overall slowly increased as the song went on.
This album was absolutely swell, and the first I have heard from this band. This album left me wanting more.
