Captive of the Sun finds Parquet Courts penned in. Its words tumble out in a manner that prevents each utterance from getting any space to breathe until they hit on “a melody abandoned in the key of New York”.
The song sits at the heart of ‘Human Performance’, an album that sees the Brooklyn quartet appear to settle down just a little. Removed from their spiteful early garage-rock and the wild ‘Monastic Living’ EP, it’s home to melodies that glimmer, insular post-punk and warped vignettes. Just below the surface, though, are grinding, anxious gears.
This is what life, particularly life in a big city, is like. There are baubles in every window, beautiful everyday tableaus at each turn and lights that tug at your attention, but there are also stretches of mind-numbing repetition, nervous waiting and necessary actions that drive our day-to-day.
Parquet Courts pull those two strands close to one another, but keep enough distance so that there is never a sense of harmony. Rather, the overriding feeling that there’s something not quite right.
In Outside and Berlin Got Blurry you have some of the most outwardly pop moments of their career and also the most rewarding. They knock heads with the giddy weirdness of Dust, home to an undulating piano hook and Devo-esque ‘Sweep!’ command, and the semi-morose Captive of the Sun. I Was Just Here sticks out as being wilfully obtuse.
The title track encapsulates both sides of the coin. In songwriting terms it is disarming, springing into its melodic stride from the opening lovestruck line: “I know exactly where I was when I first saw you the way I see you now.” Soon, though, we are on the other side of a tear in the relationship’s fabric. Dishes pile in the sink and ashtrays overflow amid spent bottles. The song’s sunny demeanour, like the album that takes its name, is misleading.
As far back as 2013, following the release of ‘Light Up Gold’, the band were being described as “snotty, ‘difficult’ young Lou Reeds” by the Guardian and there is an air of the Velvet Underground here, particularly in its sombre asides and refrains.
Yet ‘Human Performance’ is more about Parquet Courts’ continued evolution than it is nods to the past. Here we have a band pushing themselves to extremes by allowing soft edges to make themselves known. In doing so, they might find more eyes falling on their work before the penny drops: all is not what it seems.
Parquet Courts Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows
Tue June 14 2016 - BRISTOL Trinity
Wed June 15 2016 - LIVERPOOL Invisible Wind Factory
Thu June 16 2016 - EDINBURGH La Belle Angele
Fri June 17 2016 - LEEDS Irish Centre
Sat June 18 2016 - MANCHESTER Gorilla
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