- Wide Awake! is the latest record from New York City based quartet Parquet Courts. Wide Awake! sees Parquet Courts no longer necessarily playing to their established strengths, as they ambitiously branch out into a distinct variety of different styles of popular music. It’s informed by the primitivism of new wave bands like Talking Heads and Pere Ubu as well as by the stubborn rock of bands like Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Pavement, while incorporating elements of James Brown style funk, Gil Scott Heron inspired political rap and soul, nods to Peter Tosh’s marijuana stained reggae, and Can’s krautrock and jazz-based experimentalism. It’s establishment blues, it’s stories of the street, and it will not be televised (unless you count the appearances on prime day-time and late up late U.S. television).
As the title implies, there’s a deliberate effort to survey social and political “wokeness” on the part of the band, and particularly its artistic director and front man Andrew Savage. From the outset, it gives the album the right element of generalised world-worn skepticism, but it leans more on the side of indistinct and cliche than genuinely galvanizing. They confront politics in a similar way to Total Control on their most recent LP Laughing at the System and I feel, similarly to Total Control, Parquet Courts grasp indistinctly at making their sentiments into a meaningful idea for a song; they poke without ever really pinning something down and focusing in. I think this arises from the sharp distinction drawn between personal and the political subject matter, as well as the sardonic use of different styles.
Everything feels very squared off, even when it appears to be striving for the radical. There are some sweet moments that work really well. The exploratory and loose strumming of Freebird II, the longing piano paced Back To Earth with its dub echo-laden vocals, the barbershop quartet style chorus of Mardi Gras Beads and the distinctly nostalgic Before the Water Gets Too High, which sounds like a cross between Young Marble Giants and Peter Tosh. But there’s still the jagged edges of Savage’s demanding and brash vocals and the general air of cynicism from the band's non-committal flirtation with different styles and subjects that are a burden. The drums and percussion are steady and mostly unadventurous, which is a disappointing aspect of the songs that venture into styles of music that would typically feature more complex rhythms. Actually this is a real let down as the songs always feel limited by the foundational rhythm section.
Tracks like Violence, with it’s Gil Scott Heron style chronicling of violent daily life, leave the album wanting more of a focused social and political discourse. And the tracks that miss the mark really begin to weigh on the experience of the album as a whole. I’d most often rather skip tracks like Almost Had To Start A Fight / In And Out Of Patience for their boring monotony and insultingly dumb main hook, while the title track and the several other stylistically varied tracks leave the album wanting of a more developed ethnomusical statement. The title track in particular comes off less as an artistic embrace of different styles and more a cynical attempt at creating something like Pharell Williams number-one hit Happy.
After this stylistic jumping of the shark, the several tracks that follow (NYC Observation, Extinction, Death Will Bring Change) linger uncomfortably, leaving the impression of a-side material that didn’t quite make the cut, they neither add much conceptually or provide much that is memorable musically, except for the memorable addition of a child’s choir on Death Will Bring Change. Only the album closer Tenderness feels like an apt come down. It flirts with an '80’s folk rock style ballad, with a leading piano melody and funk imbued guitar line, and lyrically it provides an adequate conclusion, with its longing for the bit of tenderness that is lacking from Wide Awake.
- Jaden Gallagher.