Can we talk about how awesome Parquet Courts are?

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!