Another Dying Artform

Best Albums of the 2010s: #3

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (2013)

Also released in the 2010s: Tally All the Things You Broke EP (2013), Sunbathing Animal (2014), Content Nausea EP (2014), Monastic Living (2015), Human Performance (2016), Wide Awake! (2018)

Originally released in a limited fashion in 2012, the first album from Parquet Courts was birthed from the fresh ashes of Austin-based weirdos Fergus & Geronimo. Light Up Gold was immediate in its impression not only by the distinction of its content, but from the continual strains from its musical references. Any listener well versed in the history of indie-alternative-garage-new wave-punk rock will seize onto something familiar, as this debut feels as practiced and pondered as revisionist history can. Some staid purists may criticize such conspicuous comparisons, but where the obvious resemblance to past rock bands ends grows fertile inspiration and invention. With that framework, Light Up Gold becomes an tended field full of blossoming homages without the stink of ponderous imitation.

To unravel this chronicle, a great place to start is the music’s assured, yet unassuming rhythm. Each song has a metronomic energy that propels Light Up Gold to intriguing and memorable places. The swift taps on opener “Master of My Craft” set the scene for this wild ride, as the loose fretwork labors to keep adequate pace. The words spill over like beat poetry that refuses to take itself seriously. “You should see the wall of ambivalence I’m building” is delivered among the random rants on blunt consumerism, unnoticed next to winning phrases like “Socrates died in the fuckin’ gutter!” The vocal rambling is fleeting yet articulate as this college paper treatise is given to showcase the overeducated and underwhelmed. It means everything and nothing as the song ends cold, but immediately moves on to the next without reflection.

With nearly half of the songs clocking under two minutes, Parquet Courts makes an imperative to devise little curios throughout Light Up Gold rather than litter the album with discount filler. The odd musings and observations on these shorties evolve into a compelling exercise in eccentric chords and creative riffs. “Donuts Only” takes a sideways look at the stark difference between Texas and Brooklyn, tying it neatly to the influence of a community’s predominant religion on culture. The themes on “Careers in Combat” connect to their middle America roots as well, as the dire sales pitch for military service rolls monotone over the repetitive riff. They still manage to wax esoteric on “Caster of Worthless Spells”, ruminating on war, philosophy, and hell as feedback curdles the entire song’s structure. Despite their brevity, these tracks add detail and interest on Gold, branding some witty poetry inside the unique punk vocabulary.

In their intentionally sloppy riffs, smart-ass delivery, and laconic production, Parquet Courts get saddled with the “slacker” label by critics without flinching. The endeavor given on each song for Gold is palpable, as it takes plenty of consideration and prep work to project the persona of halfhearted underachievers. Being so effortlessly performed and immediately enjoyable, the finer details of “Stoned and Starving” are easy to overlook. The band takes a tight beat and drawled chords for this album’s centerpiece and stretches it into an elastic exercise, complete with a wailing twin guitar coda. Through the five minutes, the song manages to reference Wire, The Strokes, The Feelies, Meat Puppets, and Pavement without directly sounding like any one of the above. Read up on the reviews Parquet Courts receive and all these infamous bands as well as Modern Lovers, Sonic Youth, Dead Kennedys, Silkworm, The Fall, The Minutemen and more, get tagged to them by their enthusiastic arbiters. Still, the true accomplishment on Light Up Gold is not simply tracing the lineage of rock & roll’s storied underground, but finding their singular voice out of that wilderness to strike their own identity in an auspicious and truly original beginning.

Read the 2012 ADA piece on Light Up Gold.

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Light Up Gold on Bandcamp via What’s Your Rupture?

Best Albums of the 2010s: #4

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (2010)

Also released in the 2010s: Monomania (2013), Fading Frontier (2015), Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (2019)

Listening to Deerhunter’s discography in chronological order is like watching the growth of a child with each album representing a milestone in maturity and development. Debut LP Turn It Up Faggot is a bloody, raging birth that has no other directive than demanding to be heard. Cryptograms plays like a raw toddler that in it’s best moments can surprise with each word it properly articulates and each confident step it takes toward getting someplace meaningful. The 2008 output of Microcastle & Weird Era Cont. are the achievements of a strong willed child beginning to form its own ideas, thoughts, and emotions, gaining poise with each small achievement and vote of encouragement. In 2010, following an EP release of unofficial studio exercises (as well as LP Logos from Bradford Cox’s solo project Atlas Sound), Deerhunter offered the public Halcyon Digest. How will this fit into the developmental timeline? Will it be a restless, temperamental juvenile full of exploratory “experimentation”? A lovelorn, pubescent teenager unleashing aching, penciled poetry from a spiral notebook? Those may have been possible results if this emboldened band had not been so heartened to “grow up” and attempt something of relative maturity and accomplishment.

This newly calculated approach on Halcyon Digest begins with the opening track. “Earthquake” sounds like anything but a Earth-shaking event; rather it is a removed observation of a planet-splitting event taking place in distant outer space. The track is intense and emotion-filled, building to a meaningful studio-modified crescendo while decidedly restrained, opting for beauty over dissonance. This commitment to loveliness is strung throughout the album connected by the best examples in the two early releases. From the mandolin plucks on “Revival” to the harpsichord plinks on “Helicopter”, the painstaking attention to the instrumentation delivers these melodies in just the right manner that ties the whole album together. It is on “Helicopter” where Cox delivers his strongest vocal performance to date, a longing perspective on drugs and their eventual diminishment. His voice is moving, hitting each tender note as the warmth rolls through, giving an emotive lift to the listener while each member of Deerhunter is dialed in for the song’s performance.

Another noteworthy contrast on Halcyon Digest is the interspersed quiet moments spread throughout the album. A song about loneliness, “Sailing” drifts along on scarce production featuring barely more than guitar and vocals over a subtle rhythm. The machine-like trickle of ambiance underneath is what makes the moment transcendent. Toward the end, when Cox bays for no one to hear, it is that sound of nothing that makes the track so powerful. “Basement Scene” is creepily inviting for a song about being stuck between the frivolity of youth and the perils of aging. Sounding like the darkest corner of an Everly Brothers classic, the track creaks along on a hazy hum and a ticking drumstick tap.

Deerhunter stretched influences are more apparent on Halcyon as they reach into welcomed, unexplored arenas. This is most notable on the Lockett Pundt-fronted tracks where the annals of alternative rock are in full regalia. One might have to check their Jesus and Mary Chain collection to make sure that “Fountain Stairs” is not a cover song. “Desire Lines” has the insistent energy of a shoegazer classic that stretches over six minutes, finishing like a Pixies song with an interlocked riff and rhythm so good that there is no other choice but to keep it going as long as possible. Finishing of the album is “He Would Have Laughed” with a quirky beat and sunny synths feeling like an early Caribou track. Beginning hopeful and resonant, an acoustic guitar moves to the front of the mix as the sonic environment goes sideways until the eerily abrupt ending.

If we are still accepting the developmental signpost theory, Halcyon Digest seems to have skipped over its awkward teenage years, revealing a full-fledged graduate with honors. Often when a band takes such a bold step forward into a more mature sound there is an eventual backlash and longing for more songs “like the old stuff”. There are no regrets here, only the joy of watching a band crawl, walk, run and hit the air soaring. Halcyon Digest is simply their most assured album and a testament to Deerhunter’s dogged pursuit of exploration, details, clarity and perfection in their music.

Read the original 2010 ADA piece on Halcyon Digest

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Halcyon Digest on 4AD Records

Best Albums of the 2010s: #5

Pile - A Hairshirt of Purpose (2017)

Also released in the 2010s: Magic Isn’t Real (2010), Dripping (2012), You’re Better Than This (2015), Odds and Ends (2018), Green and Gray (2019)

In cities with lively scenes, one band often ends up representing a specific subgenre to both insiders and outsiders. Pile has been the source of Boston’s indie rock pride for the past decade—not unlike the way Mudhoney was the beating heart of pre-Nevermind DIY Seattle. The quartet’s more crowd-pleasing songs, like “Don’t Touch Anything” and “Baby Boy,” have become occasions for joyous basement singalongs across the country, for crowds to recognize a shared love. No longer content with this endless cycle of writing and touring, Pile’s principal songwriter Rick Maguire left the comfortable cosmopolitan environs of the East Coast last year to spend time in rural Appalachia. The result of this creative respite and reflection is A Hairshirt of Purpose, an album weighted heavily by Maguire’s bucolic surroundings and his self-imposed solitude.

Historically, Pile’s LPs have never had much of a central theme. But on Hairshirt, the thirteen tracks are connected by a clear thread of consternation. “Leaning on a Wheel” displays a prickly restlessness in its flirtation with Americana and acrimony. “So play in traffic/ Have a kid/ And may every good deed be in self-interest” is a statement charged with resentment. Leading with cutthroat strings under percussionist Kris Kuss’s simmering drumroll, “Rope’s Length” evokes an unsettling disconnect. When we reach the chorus “But I want it at rope’s length/ If I’m not being used”, the song’s protagonist is already proverbially lost at sea. Pile have always been masters of askew chord progressions, and on Hairshirt, these riffs pair with lyrical brooding to add an extra layer of tension.

The sense of chagrin that’s woven into Hairshirt goes beyond bellowing and bombast. “Making Eyes,” with its reluctant piano and lumbering tempo, contributes to the song’s theme of cloistered paranoia. As expected, Pile still manage to get in some bruisers like “Texas” that take the reins off of the rhythm section and let dual guitars tangle for some raucous jousting. Bitter sentiment and churning cadence merge on “Dogs,” a pitter-patting of tender chords steadily swelling into an orchestral thunderstorm. Mustering all his spite, Maguire finally cuts loose: “Then I pretend to sleep alone/ I’d rather on the ground than in your bed/ I’ll sleep on the lawn or stay up instead.” For a band that has been so closely tied to its homebase, A Hairshirt of Purpose is a powerful album driven by anxiety and separation.

Read the 2017 ADA piece on A Hairshirt of Purpose

Spotify | YouTube | Buy A Hairshirt of Purpose on Bandcamp via Exploding in Sound