PARQUET COURTS – TALLY ALL THE THINGS THAT YOU BROKE

But that excuse is scratched out in red marker, and instead, front and center, are five “Self-Evident Truths” taken from each of the five songs of the EP. Parquet Courts, if for only some brief minutes on this collection, actually spend some time caring about, you know, stuff. There’s even a song on here that nods to the subversive punk directives of bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag and is diametrically opposed to anything resembling a “slacker” anthem.

Released just over a year after Light Up Gold, the droll post-punk of the band’s debut rolls onward for these five songs about heartbreak, rebellion, depression, and trying to deliver weed on a bike. Levity remains Parquet Courts’ strongest suit, obviously. They’re the young wise fools of New York (by way of Texas), and their sound openly recalls all the frayed and wiry post-rock of the 80s and 90s, though their southern twang and sharp satire push them away from being revivalists. Savage’s delivery of the anxieties running through his mind is just as thrilling as the spidery guitars that run beside them. What separates him from his Gen-X forebears is that none of what he does feels typically cool at all—he has a way of masking honest songwriting in crooked wordplay and a joke about the munchies. At his most honed, he’s a two-bit philosopher on “You’ve Got Me Wonderin’ Now”, suggesting that “Toothache’s better than heartache” and “Seasick’s better than heartsick,” but some heart-breaker has him second guessing his own platitudes.

The rhythm section is wound tight on the Tally EP, whether snapping against each other to get totally wired (“Descend (The Way)”) and stumbling into each other to get totally weird (“Fall On Yr Face”). Even when they stretch it out for five minutes on the shuffle-punk of “The More You Use It”, they stay focused. That’s the song that hurls out a succession of anarcho-individualist platitudes (“Say something without the words they fed ya! Find something they didn’t tell you to hunt for!”), any one of which could be stenciled on a DIY zine. If you ever doubted that Parquet Courts gave shits, this is their exonerating testimony. Savage sends each line out to the back of the club every time, all underneath sugary post-punk revival guitar lines courtesy of Savage and his longtime associate Austin Brown.

All this leads to the finale, an ambling snooze-rap that sounds like a bunch of kids doing a loving but remarkably faded tribute to the Beastie Boys. The song trails a weed courier on his bike as he cruises through the streets of New York, seeing paths in all directions, walking up stoops in Union Square, and ringing hundreds of apartment buzzers. All’s well for our hero until he gets busted on Wilson Ave. in Bushwick by the 83rd Precinct. He’s left handcuffed in the gutter as Savage lets out the last of the “Self-evident Truths” Parquet Courts detail on the cover, “The powers that be choose to surveil the poor.” Unfortunately it drags meaninglessly on for three minutes against some dog-whistle guitar feedback—a sloppy way end an otherwise stellar EP. That “jam” at the end does, however, remind us that Parquet Courts are still just loveable ne’er-do-wells, content to be starlings of the sardonic slipstream just as much as they want to rise above. They don’t waste the involuted micro-analysis that comes with THC—the wan, specific observations about love and life—they actually use it.

Tracklist