Can we talk about how awesome Parquet Courts are?

i'm listening to it on spotify right now

Hmm, it's telling me "This album is not available"

are you u.s.?

i can't tell how much i like this band vs. how much i just miss bands that sound like this, i guess it doesn't matter but i am feeling old

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, January 22, 2013 3:30 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah i can see feeling that way

btw listening now on spotify, i'm in the USA

Hmm, it's telling me "This album is not available"

if you click on the band name you'll see the one that's still available, there are two versions for the two record labels it's been out on

Yeah, I'm in the us. idgi...maybe my spotifies is broken.

Oh, I see! I had the old one bookmarked in a playlist.

I'm gonna go see them saturday in brooklyn at 285 Kent with Purling Hiss and La Big Vic

stoked

they're also playing here in March with The Men

they're also playing live on cherry time clinic on wfmu on saturday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs2_OMnkcxE

sorry cherry blossom clinic

I was de-bat-ing swedish fish

forget about it

socrates died in the fucking gutter

I was de-bat-ing swedish fish

― dmr, Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

The first few times I thought he was saying "deep-eating swedish fish" and i thought "yeah, i've done that."

The horrible thing is that as much as I like what Parquet Courts are up to, I'm coming around to the idea that I like Foxygen (at least some of their better stuff) better. Overt pastiche vs. not quite as overt pastiche?

Ugh, Foxygen is THE WORST. If there's a new band I hate more this year, I'll be surprised.

i just checked this out, and within 5 seconds, I was transported to a college dorm in 1990. in a good way.

This is pretty likeable stuff so long as I can convince myself I'm not just indulging nostalgia for the days of my youth. I get a very strong early Pavement (pre-Slanted and Enchanted) vibe, but this is a bit more straightforward, not as arty, which is good, because the arty parts of early Pavement are not the best parts. The album starts very strong, by the second tune I'm pumping my fist in the air, but then there seems to be a lot of songs that kind of blend into each other, but maybe I just need to listen to it some more.

i don't really hear a lot of pavement personally. although they have a derivative sound, it's hard for me to narrow down on specific bands they sound like (aside from GBV on "picture of health")

They sound kind of like Pavement's cover of "Box Elder" to me. It's something about the way the guitar/drums/bass sound, or maybe its the tunings, or the subtle country-rock/CCR influence. I'd have to listen some more to try and pin it down.

Do people who like this band like Fergus & Geronimo? That's another project with Andrew Savage, the lead vocalist/guitarist of this band. That one seems a bit more like a jokey bedroom recording project than a real band, but there were some catchy tunes on last year's album.

Do people who like this band like Fergus & Geronimo?

not as much. I did check it out after I got really into this record. it's ok.

box elder is not a cover

this album is really great. they sound v much like a NYC pavement

this album is pretty sweet

This is pretty likeable stuff so long as I can convince myself I'm not just indulging nostalgia for the days of my youth.

Or even if I am

So bummed out - I waited 5 hours after opening the window to buy tickets to their London gig and by the time I went to pull the trigger it was sold out.

digging it but the songs/tones/guitars sound so samey

idk if i like the tuneless singing

they sound v much like a NYC pavement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNvk1g53mw4

box elder is not a cover

You're right, sorry. I think it was mis-reported as a Wedding Present cover in some early reviews and the idea got stuck in my head. Also, since the lyrics were a bit more straightforward than other songs from the period, it was believable to me that it was the work of a different songwriter.

wedding present chose some great songs to cover

i dont hear too much pavement in this, but i did notice in Careers in Combat the lyric "there are no more art museums to guard", a job that SM and West had at the Whitney

liking this l.p a lot. don't hear a great deal of pavement, gbv or strokes(!?) but getting a big Eddy Current Supression Ring vibe from it - especially 'stoned and starving'.

strokes(!?)

yes okay i get it already, it was one part of one song, jeezalou

don't really think the strokes is that far off, more west coast, sunnier, less grey, skuzzier wonkier, v modern lovers but it's not really cool, it doesn't have that swagger, if jonathan richman was played by napoloeon dynamite. there's a bit of the geek energy of pavement but it's a bit too restrained and calculated to hit those highs, can't really imagine myself falling in love with this, but it's a lot of fun, i guess

also i feel like there have been diy bands doing this exact same thing forever, but i can't for the life of me think of any examples

liking that song youtubed upthread - what I'm hearing for now is, quite obviously, Wire

Might be slightly late to this party, but this band... Where else in the world can I find a new band who satiate my love of Pavement, early Talking Heads, Modern Lovers etc? If they sound like a bunch of old bands, I simply do not care.

They're a bit like Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats in that really they're a new band who sound like an amalgamation of a lot of old bands but somehow don't sound totally derivative of these because they're actually fucking great at writing and playing songs rather than being simply great at genre exercises.

have listened to first minute of first song, sounds good! surprised to hear they're from brooklyn -- oh, looking it up, i see they're really from texas which makes more sense

"borrowed time" kind of makes me think of art brut! so far this seems VERY DISTANT from pavement to me but songs denoted "pavementy" above haven't come up yet.

'N. Dakota' feels like a sequel to Motion Suggests Itself imo

I think the Pavement comparisons are largely (but not wholly derived) from the album artwork. I hear a passing resemblance to Black Lips too I think.

Anyone seeing them in London this week?

OK, "Yonder Is Closer to the Heart" does kind of start out like it's going to be a cover of "Yr Killin Me" and for that matter non-standard orthography of "Yr No Stoner" also reminiscent of, well, "Yr Killin Me?"

I guess I would say -- there are a lot of moments where the guitar tone reminds me of Pavement but the drums NEVER remind me of Pavement so as a whole this doesn't sound much like Pavement.

Anyone seeing them in London this week?

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Monday, March 18, 2013 3:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup, going on thursday. Love this album - simple pleasure, spent 5 mins fretting about whether I was lazily indulging cognates of the sound of my youth but hahahahahaha dgaf this is fucking great.

http://www.nyctaper.com/2013/03/parquet-courts-march-7-2013-bowery-ballroom-flacmp3streaming/

I enjoyed the Sebright arms gig, mostly. They sound great, but vocals coming up a bit short - there's that kind of scruffy charismatic (for indie readings of charismatic) delivery that's there on the record, but absent on stage.

Crowd was arms-crossed and sluggish, I thought, which dragged things down. A London thing maybe - large numbers there for the event, not up on the songs – but maybe to do with attracting slightly older audience.

I have had "Borrowed Thyme" stuck in my head since Monday afternoon, definitely need to give this a full listen ( I play tracks on my radio show cuz it is in rotation).

Yeah, that was one of the videos - great track. Light Up Gold, Sunbathing Animal, Human Performance and Wide Awake! all made my year-end top ten lists pretty easily. They're kind of like Spoon in the sense that I always liked them, but after releasing four great albums in quick succession, HOW much I liked them really snuck up on me, as if I underrated them and suddenly realized they had been my favorite band of the past decade.

Yeah, I'm enjoying the whole thing, but "Homo Sapien" does make a really nice and well appreciated diversion back to the LUG era. I dig it.

"and space is so passe"

this is lots of fun.

Nice B-side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TP8WoWAmqY

Apparently they played this on Ellen DeGeneres's show in angry fashion, leading some to think they were sending a message to/about DeGeneres.

Should have searched - there's a clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4inigGayAq0

Screengrab looks like Fred Armisen

I revisited the Teenage Cool Kids' Denton After Sunset, and was surprised by how super Pavement-y the first half is (maybe I'm particularly attuned, b/c I have Pave on the brain). The sideways guitars in "Denton After Sunset"; Savage's vocal tone in "Kachina Doll"; the "la-la-la-la" harmonies and "Box Elder" lyric quote in "Landlocked State"; the way "No Fragments Reach" sounds like it was recorded right after listening to "Range Life" a few dozen times... etc.

Then the album shifts gears: "Jealous Convert" sounds exactly like it could be a (top-tier) Love as Laughter song; "Volvo to a Kiss" is sort of generic fuzzed-out NYC/Hoboken indie rock; "Beg to Differ" is sorta Beat Happening-ish(?); and the final track could be, I dunno, a more melodic version of Gaffney-era Sebadoh.

I guess you could say it's a grab bag of styles, done really well – slivers of which pop up in Parquet Courts, but this album really makes explicit how steeped Savage was in the '90s stuff. (I just read on Wikipedia that they had two prior albums? I'd be interested to hear those.)

Haha, wow, the first track on the album before that is like Camper Van Beethoven meets Perfect-era Built to Spill. These guys were too much!