Parquet Courts

I'm easing back into the music writing thing gradually, like the way you get into a really hot bath, one toe at a time. For instance, yesterday, I got my ass in gear just enough to finish a show preview for Parquet Courts, a scrabbly, guitar-banging post-punk outfit whose lyrics are smarter than they need to be, but not as smart as they'd be if they weren't mostly about weed. The band's main writer is Andrew Savage, whom you might remember from Fergus & Geronimo.

The album, Light Up Gold is getting a formal, commercial release on What's Your Rupture later this month, but it's been on Bandcamp since the summer, and you can still listen to it there.

Here they are playing CMJ not too long ago.

CMJ 2012: Parquet Courts performs "Yr No Stoner" at Death By Audio, Brooklyn from BlearyEyedBrooklyn.com on Vimeo.

Today, maybe an actual album review, what do you think?

Incoming…Fergus & Geronimo

Hardly Art, which is Sub Pop’s little brother label, has a new smart alecky, lo-fi-and-proud-of-it band from Texas called Fergus & Geronimo. The band is essentially two guys, Jason Kelly and Andrew Savage, and their debut is all over the indie map, with the common factor seeming to be a certain wry, sarcastic intelligence, a general dissatisfaction with the world the way it is. Hardly Art has selected Spector-influenced “Powerful Lovin’” as the free mp3, but really, the reason I’m writing about this band is their pissed off tour de force, “Wanna Know What I Would Do?”. For me, it’s the highlight of Unlearn, if only because it lands so hard on the posers and free-riders that are somehow still squeezing money out of an otherwise unremunerative music business (cos you know the bands aren’t getting any)…yeah, wonder who they’re talking about?

Here’s my favorite verse:
“Wanna know what I would do?/I’d buy a round of drinks for someone new/I’d promise lots of pussy/to somebody that cared/and drop the names of bands who impressed chicks downstairs.”

And also,
“Wanna know what I would do?/I’d recognize that culture evolves and isn’t forced/by people without brains who think that art can be co-erced.”

But of course it can...that's why we care about Best Coast.

Take that, industry weasels.