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Parquet Courts At The First Unitarian Church *Sold Out*

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Time Out says

Parquet Courts Little was said about Parquet Courts’ debut effort, American Specialties. Released exclusively on cassette tape, the quasi-album was an odd collection of 4 track recordings that left those who were paying attention wanting more. A year of woodshedding live sets passed before the Courts committed another song to tape. The band’s first proper LP, Light Up Gold, is a dynamic and diverse foray into the back alleys of the American DIY underground. Bright guitars swirl serpentine over looping, groovy post-punk bass lines and drums that border on robotic precision. While the initial rawness of the band’s early output remains, the songwriting has gracefully evolved. Primary wordsmiths A. Savage and Austin Brown combine for a dynamic lyrical experience, one part an erudite overflow of ideas, the other an exercise in laid-back observation. Lyrically dense, the poetry is in how it flows along with the melody, often times as locked-in as the rhythm section. “This record is for the over-socialized victims of the 1990’s ‘you can be anything you want’, Nickelodeon-induced lethargy that ran away from home not out of any wide-eyed big city daydream, but just out of a subconscious return to America’s scandalous origin,” writes Savage in the album’s scratched-out liner notes. Recorded over a few days in an ice-box practice space, Light Up Gold is equally indebted to Krautrock, The Fall, and a slew of contemporaries like Tyvek and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Though made up of Texan transplants, Parquet Courts are a New York band. Throw out the countless shallow Brooklyn bands of the blasé 2000’s: Light Up Gold is a conscious effort to draw from the rich culture of the city - the bands like Sonic Youth, Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground that are not from New York, but of it. A panoramic landscape of dilapidated corner-stores and crowded apartments is superimposed over bare-bones Americana, leaving little room for romance or sentiment. It’s punk, it’s American, it’s New York… it’s the color of something you were looking for. Blues Control A spacey hybrid of Suicide/Velvet Underground droned out rock with more dreamy moments along the lines of Windy & Carl. They weave a lush tapestry of meditative sound collages warped with wavering piano flutters and beaming drones, all rising steadily toward the hazy sky. Cracked and krautrockish DIY avant-blues experiments. A nice blend of pop catchiness and free-psych trippyness, the perfect record for a summer walk around town or a sunny BBQ burn out, this one is recommended! Sheer Mag Sheer Mag's logo looks like the cover of an early hard rock record—all-caps font, jagged lettering. It seems appropriate, then, that at the outset of their 7" opener "What You Want", there's a guitar line with the same approximate structure as the central portion of Kiss' "Strutter". It's a fleeting-but-important moment—within the first few seconds of impact, they emphasize the "power" half of power pop. They bust out guitar solos that fly high. Their singer spits out words like, "What you want? What do you want me to do?," seemingly delivered more out of frustration than desperation. That tinge of anger—heard both in their vocals and their scuzzy junkyard guitar sound—is the perfect complement to "What You Want"'s swooning, power chord-driven melody. It's that ideal balance between sweet and sour. The track, one of four very good ones on their new 7", is an exciting introduction to this Philadelphia band. Get tickets: http://ticketf.ly/1HaxfGn

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