The prevailing “slacker” narrative about Brooklyn’s Parquet Courts is a monumental misdirection. While the band’s debut full-length Light Up Gold contains lines like “slackers conference at the buffet table“ and the chronicles at least one epic journey for snacks (“Stoned and Starving”), diagnosis Parquet Courts are deft indie punk craftsmen and live performers.
Parquet Courts presented an impressively confident stage presence opening for Woods in front of an already sold-out early show at T.T. the Bear’s. Watching Parquet Courts headbang and thrash around in front of a rapt audience, I couldn’t help but think of New York’s old guard of hip hype: The Strokes. If their founding approach over a decade ago was classic rock star restraint and distance, then Parquet Courts operate on an engine that’s in your face. Co-frontmen Austin Brown and Andrew Savage have no problem with being visibly impassioned in front of a crowd that probably didn’t expect the foursome’s raw power.
The most remarkable thing about Parquet Courts is that while their influences are easily identifiable, there are few bands out there who can blend them together so well and create such compact, dense songs about being a 20-something in 2013. Light Up Gold’s collective voice draws from a storied lineage of sardonic songwriters, namely Frank Zappa, Jonathan Richman, and Stephen Malkmus. Sure, there are plenty of borderline non-sequiturs to be found in the liner notes (“Socrates died in the fucking gutter!”), but there’s also a David Byrne-esque seriousness that coexists with Parquet Courts’ more playful lyrical moments. The upbeat, anthemic chorus of “Borrowed Time” slightly obscures the deeper meditation on the power of memory in an uncertain age. Many of Parquet Courts’ thematic concerns over sitting around fall in line with those that Cloud Nothings explored in their 2012 punk opus Attack On Memory, perhaps marking another example of unsatisfied-and-angry Recession Rock. Live, Parquet Courts’ music exudes this energy to the point of inspiring headbangers on both sides of the dive’s divide.
Parquet Courts possess a keen awareness of conceptual and musical dynamics, though. “N Dakota” is an almost monotone exploration of the Midwest’s simplistic remoteness (“At night we hum to Canada snoring”) set to a backdrop of mid-late Pavement jangle. The chugging groove of “Stoned and Starving” follows on the album’s tracklisting and brings the listener back to New York City, but not without introspection. If Galaxie 500 made waiting in line for a Coke and Twinkie an almost existential crisis in “Strange,” then the similar debate between Swedish Fish and licorice in “Stoned” can’t be all that far away.
Parquet Court’s punk energy proved a mismatch for the psych-folk of Woods, their fellow Brooklynites and the night’s headlining act. Several concertgoers were overheard remarking on how strange the lineup was considering the divergent styles of the two bands. Most attendees likely went to catch Parquet Courts before their next visit to the Boston area when they’ll surely level up to a bigger venue and play another raucous packed show.
