Parquet Courts - Wide Awake

Parquet Courts are back with a new record after their longest break between their albums in their career, (though it's only been two years since Human Performance, they're a highly prolific band),  and it's not an unqualified success. Wide Awake! is an angry record, angry at the anger and the violence at large in the world just now, and it's also a wordy one, dominated by A.Savage at the expense of their other songwriter Austin Brown and subsequently slightly lopsided in comparison with their other records. It has some of the best songs of their career but I don't think it's their best album.

Total Football, the opening track is typical of the approach and one of the best things on here. A comparison of the collective spirit embodied by the 1974 Dutch World Cup football team that gave name to the term, and an analogy of the old world that the band are railing against and the collective consciousness offered by the New World's youth.The comparison of the team ethos of a football team that can switch positions at will in comparison with the lone wolf American archetype embodied by an American Football team quarterback.  It's a laboured metaphor, the band are and always have been 'too cool for school', but it's a good tune and funny too.

Elsewhere the record lacks coherence. As a band they've always hopped from one mood to another but Human Performance for one certainly had a greater sense of balance, which was offered by Brown's melodic nous which counterpointed Savage's barely suppressed wordy rage. The former is largely absent here. The album is produced by Danger Mouse, and his know-how certainly gives the record a polished  sheen which contrasts with the band previous lo-fi feel but when they try to bring the funk they don't have the feel for black music, that's required. There have been plenty of white guitar bands who could pull this off, Talking Heads and Gang Of Four for example, but Parquet Courts are far too self-conscious to be able to follow suit. The title track verges on laughable in this respect. There's no comparison point with Pavement here, an obvious reference which plagued the band and obviously irked them greatly. But in attempting to make a brave career shift from the waters they previously occupied they've ended up muddying the waters somewhat. So while several things here add to the band's considerable back catalogue overall this seems like a somewhat missed opportunity.