Parquet Courts at Gorilla in Manchester review

Image: Parquet Courts

Don’t try to keep up with Parquet Courts, you won’t be able to. Go and put the kettle on and you’ll miss an album release. Five LPs in as many years – including Sunbathing Animal and Constant Nausea in 2014 – and twenty songs in a frantic hour at Gorilla, they tend to deliver vociferously and with constant precision.

Gorilla was sweltering, it always is. The gig exploded into life after openers 'Outside' and 'Dust' - during 'Paraphrased' also off this year’s ‘Human Performance’, when fervent co-frontman Andrew Savage’s vocal cords were stretched to their limit.

Find Gorilla tickets

The excellent single 'Berlin Got Blurry' (listen above) stood out. So did the first-verse lyrics “that takes commitment and you just don’t have it”, with a meaning that cannot be attributed to the band itself. They’re not slackers, nor should they be lazily characterised as your archetypal deadbeat indie band.

Savage, on top of his musical commitments to Parquet Courts, is an artist and also performs in other bands: Wiccans and PCPC – and in-keeping with Courts’ underground DIY aesthetic, he designs each band’s artwork.

It wasn’t all played at breakneck speed. There was also slower, more-mature moments – namely tracks off the new record such as 'Steady on My Mind'; the brooding and psychedelic 'One Man No City' which sounds like something that’d happen if Mark E. Smith and David Byrne sat down and recorded a song together; the trippy and momentous 'Human Performance' and Sunbathing Animal track 'Dear Ramona'.

The latter followed the quick one-two of 'Master of My Craft' and 'Borrowed Time' off 2012’s Light Up Gold. It was peak Parquet Courts. The mosh pit agreed as crowd-surfing commenced.

 

#parquetcourts #gorilla

A photo posted by @bunkbedalley on Jun 19, 2016 at 5:14am PDT

Credit: @bunkbedalley

Although Savage’s words, intense in delivery and jaded in subject, were lost in the noise, the exhilaration of the band’s sound made it impossible to care. The co-frontman –  he shares vocal duties with fellow guitarist Austin Brown – is the principal voice of the band.

Parquet Courts are incandescent and are on a roll  – a triple-threat of lamenting almost-spoken, often-shouted words from Savage; doltish humour, softer vocals, and offset keys from Austin Brown; and the unerring self-assuredness of bearded-bassist Sean Yeaton who stands between them, is the bedrock for a contemporary-rock band that makes enthralling angular music like there’s no tomorrow. 

The avant-garde Brooklynites, while hidden from the mainstream, are in-demand to those who know what the band is about: guitar-driven grooves, inexhaustible energy and thinking-man’s lyrics.

Following the sold-out show, they’re back again in Manchester during October and will most likely have – going off the rate they’re making music – a new album written, recorded, mixed, and in shops by then.

Find more Gorilla tickets 

Like this? Try our review of Field Day 2016