Again trying to make up for my pathetic year-behindness (ie, rarely getting music from the current year), and patting myself on the back for my explorations of different genres, I quit while I’m ahead and come running back to some simple rock n roll.
And it's hard for it to get any simpler than this:
Most of the songs begin with the simplest of guitar riffs which is then wrapped up snugly with a perfectly complementary bass line and beat. The yelping is right out of early Meat Puppets.
My copy also includes their EP Tally All the Things That You Broke, and I’ve been too lazy to figure out where one ends and the other begins because it’s all of a piece. (Okay, the EP starts with "You've Got Me Wondering Now").
Rough and powerful, it’s the complete opposite of the Dandy Warhols - nothing smooth or commercial about it. They keep things moving, changing tempo just enough to keep you from getting bored. And I’m not! Not in the least. You’re up to track 10 before even you know what hit you. A
When to Play it: After you’ve had your coffee.
When to Not Play It: When you’re around any adult whose respect you crave.
And By the Way, How’s the Year Going So Far, Jaybee You Ask?
Something like this:
1. Light Up Gold/Tally All the Things You Broke - Parquet Courts (2013)
P.S.
I feel I need to explain.
In case anyone, God forbid, acts on a recommendation of mine.
I can understand why any upstanding citizen of similar age would question the quality of the Parquet Courts’ music, and why I'd choose it over the other records I've heard this year.
Well, there are two reasons:
First, simple rock n’ roll will always be one of my favorite genres.
Second, the PCs pursue their admittedly limited goals as relentlessly and with a single-mindedness worthy of the early Ramones. And they unquestionably reach those goals.
Perhaps the Dandy Warhols are more ambitious. Lauryn Hill certainly is. But the first are more polished than I'd like and a bit too obvious about what they steal. And poor Lauryn - as talented as she is - just isn't as much fun to be around.
After all, when someone starts a song off with:
I was hanging round Ridgewood, Queens,
I was flipping through magazines,
I was so,
Drunk and starving
.… as they do on the slightly mis-named “Stoned and Starving”, well it just brings me back, although not to Ridgewood. (But then again, who knows?)
And there’s really no defending the first guitar solo here, except to note that, after all, they are drunk, etc...
I guess the point, is that mood trumps notes. Although the guitar duel at the end of this live version shows that some folks get drunker than others.
And it’s really just as simple as that.
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