Artists that have been featured on Amoeba Music's Webby Award nominated "What's in My Bag" series either take two roads with their selected purchases: totally understandable (Smith Westerns buying Warren Zevon and Smashing Pumpkins, Lou Barlow expressing interest in Ty Segall) to totally unexpected (Ariel Pink purchasing Pentagram, Grimes admitting that she and her bandmates love Sick Puppies). Much like their third album Sunbathing Animal, Parquet Courts' wide array of choices completely do away with whatever preconceived notions one may have with the Texas by way of Brooklyn indie punkers; some choices feel as if they're culled directly from Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again novel (The Fall, The Residents, Swell Maps), while others show a deeper appreciation for our classic rock fathers/mothers (Patti Smith, The Bee Gees, R.E.M.), and the last few ones come straight out of the blue (Yoko Ono's Fly, experimental musician Karlheinz Stockhausen's Prozession).
So for those expecting Parquet Courts to delve into the same territories explored on their breakout Light Up Gold may come out of the excellent Sunbathing Animal feeling disappointed, as it acts as more of an expansion on their recent EP, Tally All the Things That You Broke. Frontman and guitarist Andrew Savage is no longer stoned and starving, and his counterpart Austin Brown is no longer referring to his girlfriend as a borealis lit fjord. These thirteen new songs make do on the same "self-evident truths" that Tally All the Things That You Broke as overstuffed lyrics spill out of Brown and Savage's respective mouths over wry and rapid fire post-punk rhythms that, simply put, are pretty damn awesome.
As Parquet Courts' popularity grew and grew throughout 2013, listeners learned more and more of the group's obvious spiritual leader, Brown. In a recent New York Times piece (written only a few months after a performance on Jimmy Fallon, proving that the band really has made it, whatever that even means anymore), Brown proudly expressed his desire to be added to the lineage of classic New York bands: The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Talking Heads and Sonic Youth. Brown moved from Denton, Texas to Brooklyn at a prime age (early twenties), claiming that he didn't choose his new home "because of any scene", which rings true. Parquet Courts play like Gang of Four or Wire, had they grown up in the Lower East Side, or Stockton, California, and sang of human anatomy, dog walkers, moleskines, dark coffee and how our house pets, acting in a purely metaphorical sense, allow us to realize the blatant redundancy in our everyday lives, asking, are cats really smarter than us?
One could unfortunately assume that Parquet Courts just ooze the classic "slacker" ethos, by taking a listen to the loping, six minute "She's Rolling", which contains almost no lyrical variation ("she's rolling down a hill") and descends into a feedback laden jam, which is hard to distinguish from the suck and blow harmonica solo, in the song's final minutes. Yeah man, everything sounds like Pavement nowadays, doesn't it?
But Parquet Courts don't recall Pavement at all (did they ever?), as they exude their own brand of self professed, "Americana punk". Sure, Light Up Gold had dopey charm, and was recorded in a space of only three days, but Savage and Brown came off much more subtle, intricate and aware than Malkmus; "Careers in Combat" funneled post college ennui into a noodly one minute anthem about military recruitment, and "Yonder Is Closer to the Heart" saw our passing lives measured in laundry bills. So as the band follows the same one-two punch of "Master of My Craft" and "Borrowed Time" with "Bodies Made Of" and "Black and White", all Pavement comparisons slip away as fast as Max Savage's boom-tap-tap drumming; the former featuring Brown claiming that "bodies [are] made of slugs and guts" over coiled guitar riffs that sound as if they can snap at any moment, and the latter, which chugs endlessly ahead in good ol' Velvet Underground fashion, as Savage finds himself referencing high art by "racing down the stairs in a nude decision", while seeing in "black and white" all as he grapples with some profound inner turmoil: "do I bother to define myself beyond what they allow? / Have I already forgotten how?"The lyrics on Sunbathing Animal seem to be considerably weirder than anything on Light Up Gold at initial listen, but soon, certain chunks of phrases and marble-mouthed couplets hit you in the face like gobs of saliva, sticking to you as they slide away. "Dear Ramona"'s I'm-smarter-than-you-but-also-increasingly-bored Jonathan Richman feel recalls one of the nineties most unsung heroes, Cake, as Brown rattles on about some mysterious, black coffee drinking, moleskine writing, sexually elusive femme fatale. "Raw Milk" distills Red Red Meat's Bunny Gets Paid into a languid ode to a dog walker, shedding away the rust and chipped paint of the aforementioned record, as guitars dizzily stumble along.
At a colossal forty-six minutes (quite long for an album, by punk rock's standards), the album's pacing proves to be one of it's strongest feats. The slow burners are able to nestle in nicely between slices of caustic post-punk landscapes, that thrive off Sonic Youth feedback and breakneck speed. "Vienna II" nicely separates the stoned, squalid anatomy ruminating "What Color Is Blood" from the surf-punk barnburner "Always Back in Town", which boils down tour life to a few essential lines: "I'm always back in town / according to you". Brown's appreciation of fine art and literature plays into the sequencing, as the album seems to play in four acts. "Sunbathing Animal" races along in the fashion of The Ramones, before giving way to the instrumental "Up All Night", segueing into the record's impeccable fourth act.
In said act exists the impossibly tense and surprisingly dense "Ducking and Dodging", which strips the band down to it's bare necessities, with Sean Yeaton's bass acting as the anchor for the remainder of the instruments performing as staccato as possible, as Brown pens the best lyrics he's ever written to date: "all my friends are disappearing / all my letters are in code... waiting by the silent telephone / I draft my next apology / burn my letters once they're read / unalloyed joy / I thrice repeat". Of course, then there's record's true standout piece, the slow burning, seven minute, "Instant Disassembly". Brown takes on the weary souls of Jagger and Dylan at their most defeated, as the Stonesy ballad unfolds lyrically, as the same power strumming and weeping guitar line play off into infinity. Brown is at his most emotionally open, sounding like a man who'd rather just drink the day away and listen to his favorite records; so it comes as no surprise that some choice lyrics are, "I kept explaining I was too tired to continue to speak", "the last classic rock band's last solid record creeps in / a call out from the blue, from an old, old friend", "I can't breathe, I can't breathe / it's hard to inhale".
But for all this talk, Sunbathing Animal is just what it is: a damn fine rock and roll record, the one that will shut up all naysayers, who claim "they don't make them like they used to". Parquet Courts' music is an amalgamation of the past century of rock music, as Brown and Savage vent their twentieth century blues (Savage himself is an avowed blues fan) through rapid-fire (seemingly) free verse poetry. They exist in an all too small group of artists who channel the entire history of rock and punk, while still crafting something that's uniquely their own (2014 saw a large crop in these artists, all making excellent records, like Ought's More Than Any Other Day, Posse's Soft Opening and even Fucked Up's Glass Boys). At it's core, Sunbathing Animal sounds just like the beginning for an already exceptionally talented band, which many feared (myself guiltily included) would burn out too early, after ten months of nearly incessant touring. But even in such a short span of time, Parquet Courts have expanded on what made them great, maturing flawlessly in the process. Or, as Brown sings on the bluesy, piano tinged closer, "Into the Garden", "you're not the same old fool you once thought yourself to be".
Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal
9/10
Recommended Tracks - "Bodies Made Of", "Black and White", "Dear Ramona", "What Color Is Blood", "Always Back in Town", "Sunbathing Animal", "Instant Disassembly", "Ducking and Dodging", "Raw Milk", "Into the Garden"
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