By:
Corey C.
At the end of the summer, I
saw the new Parquet Courts LP on the wall at the record store. At that moment
it occurred to me that the end of the summer was rapidly approaching, and that
moved me emotionally, so I thought that was a good enough reason to buy Sunbathing Animal. Plus I liked the
artwork.
It was released back in June
and I mostly ignored it because Parquet Courts had been trapped in the indie
rock news cycle for way too long and I was getting sick of them and I listened
to the new one on my laptop’s stupid tinny speakers and thought it sounded
boring.
I don’t like their last
album, Light Up Gold, anymore. I
realized its main appeal to me was that it sounded like the poor man’s version
of Tyvek’s Nothing Fits and I found
whenever I wanted to listen to Light Up
Gold I just ended up putting on Nothing
Fits and being way more satisfied. Plus, Tyvek should be way more popular
than PC. Tyvek should be bigger than U2.
This newest Parquet Courts LP
sounds like the dudes decided to ease off the accelerator a little bit and just
let shit come to them. I just turned 27 and this idea makes sense to me. Sunbathing Animal reminds me of when
Parquet Courts played in Providence at AS220 in March of 2012, and they stretched
out their songs into these gnarly, masterful guitar jams. This was quite unlike
much of the recordings and bootlegs I’d heard up to that point in time. The
live stuff I’d usually was just mashing through the tunes from Light Up Gold, and sounding mostly like
the record.
But that night in Providence
they seemed less intense, like they were moving in a less suffocating, more
open direction. Andrew Savage and Austin Brown’s dueling guitars reminded me of
Television and the third Velvet Underground record. They made me wonder what
would’ve happened if Ira Kaplan, Glenn Mercer, and Thurston Moore decided to
form a super group. I loved it.
I should’ve seen this record
coming but I’m pretty stubborn and awful when bands start to get too much
press. I distrust group-think, and I start questioning my own taste and ideals
when weird bands start appearing in Rolling Stone. Plus, I am driven to
near-homicidal rage when I read boring, lazy, cliché’d music journalism. Grantland’s
Steve Hyden, for example, writes the wackest shit on Earth, and probably wrote
something so stupid and obvious about PC that I’m not even bothering looking it
up cuz it’ll rile me up. The tipping
point for me was Rob Sheffield’s piece that compared Parquet Courts to Pavement
and made a big deal about the 90’s. I’d had enough at that point.
I’m glad I ignored my
initial reaction and purchased this record. It’s way better than the new music
from White Fence, Ty Segall, and King Tuff. I admire those three dudes, but
they haven’t made much progress in terms of sonic exploration over the past
forever. We get it guys: Black Sabbath, T. Rex, Syd Barrett, and Big Star were
great. Surprisingly, I’ll give Parquet Courts have gotten the upper-hand: they
could’ve easily cashed in on their notoriety and made a more polished version
of Light Up Gold, and write their gigantorock
bid version of “Float On.” But instead, they’ve won out, at least with me. I’ve
listen to their newest LP more than any other record from 2014.
Most importantly, we’re all blessed
with “Instant Disassembly,” the best tune from Sunbathing Animal. I had a terribly difficult putting my love for
this song into context, but at the moment, as I write this, I have the most
hyperbolic notion to compare it to The Minutemen’s “History Lesson Part II.”
I’m certain some will laugh at this earnestness. I guess I’m turning into a
fucking corndog.
