Mistletone

Artwork by Rick Milovanovic

PARQUET COURTS TOUR DATES:

Laneway Auckland: Monday, January 27 – Silo Park. Tickets & info here.
Laneway Brisbane: Friday, January 31 – RNA, Fortitude Valley. Tickets & info here.
Laneway Melbourne: Saturday, February 1 – Footscray Community Arts Centre/River’s Edge. Tickets & info here.
Laneway Sydney: Sunday, February 2 – Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle. Tickets & info here.
MELBOURNE: Wednesday January 29 @ The Corner w/- Total Control + Constant Mongrel. Tickets on sale now from The Corner box office. Presented by Mistletone, Triple R and The Music.
SYDNEY: Wednesday February 5 @ The Standard w/- Total Control + Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Presented by Mistletone, FBi Radio and The Music.
Laneway Adelaide: Friday, February 7 – Harts Mill, Port Adelaide. Tickets & info here.
Perth: Saturday, February 8 – Esplanade Park and West End, Fremantle. Tickets & info here.

New York-via-Texas bros PARQUET COURTS dish up ragged, Americana-inspired garage-punk. To quote Uncut: “Parquet Courts channel Pavement’s collapsible spirit better than any band I’ve seen or heard in a long time… (but) there’s plenty more going on in these songs than mere homage to one band. Their wiry ramalams fall into a tradition that began with The Velvet Underground (with “Loaded”, more specifically), rattled on through early ’80s Fall, and manifested itself most recently in the brilliant Australian garage band, Eddy Current Suppression Ring.”

Little was said about Parquet Courts’ debut effort, American Specialties. Released exclusively on cassette tape, the quasi-album was an odd collection of 4 track recordings that left those who were paying attention wanting more. A year of wood-shedding live sets passed before the Courts committed another song to tape.

The band’s first proper LP, Light Up Gold, is a dynamic and diverse foray into the back alleys of the American DIY underground. Bright guitars swirl serpentine over looping, groovy post-punk bass lines and drums that border on robotic precision. While the initial rawness of the band’s early output remains, the songwriting has gracefully evolved. Primary wordsmiths Andrew Savage and Austin Brown combine for a dynamic lyrical experience, one part an erudite overflow of ideas, the other an exercise in laid-back observation. Lyrically dense, the poetry is in how it flows along with the melody, often times as locked-in as the rhythm section.

According to the album’s scratched-out liner notes: “This record is for the over-socialized victims of the 1990’s ‘you can be anything you want’, Nickelodeon-induced lethargy that ran away from home not out of any wide-eyed big city daydream, but just out of a subconscious return to America’s scandalous origin”. Recorded over a few days in an ice-box practice space, Light Up Gold is equally indebted to Krautrock, The Fall, and a slew of contemporaries like Tyvek and Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

Though made up of Texan transplants, Parquet Courts are a New York band. Throw out the countless shallow Brooklyn bands of the blasé 2000’s: Light Up Gold is a conscious effort to draw from the rich culture of the city – the bands like Sonic Youth, Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground that are not from New York, but of it. A panoramic landscape of dilapidated corner-stores and crowded apartments is superimposed over bare-bones Americana, leaving little room for romance or sentiment.

Parquet Courts recently released a new five song EP, Tally All The Things That You Broke, on What’s Your Rupture?.

Forced into morning, tempted into night. Tally all the things that you broke. Bending her branches. Snapping, sapping and writhing. For me alone. Yeah, I guess sunburn’s better than heartburn (barely). Guess I never figured that out. And I thought I knew a thing or two about the blues but you’ve got me wonderin’ now.

Watch the video for “You Got Me Wonderin’ Now”, below:

And watch Parquet Courts get sweaty and silly at Death By Audio, Brooklyn performing “Borrowed Time” from their debut LP, Light Up Gold, below: