Parquet Courts
ULU, London | 25 June
Recently, Parquet Courts have been deduced as a ‘difficult’ band. Their allergic aversions towards digital marketing and online hobnobbing has been deemed both bootless and cavalier by the UK press. But why would they care? Like the DIY Minutemen imitators that have preceded them, they work on their terms; with all the quasi-punk jeering and sneering in tow. “London,” Andrew Savage addresses the ULU crowd with chronic placidity, “you know you guys have a bad reputation for not dancing?” One sassy slur and all our reserved British decency is instantly consumed by demure chaos.
Prior to Savage’s sharpshooting remarks and evident aversions to stage invaders are The Wytches. A composed and close-mouthed audience hoard beneath the pendulous locks of singer, Kristian Bell. After performing to an assembly of sun-defiled festival goers (Field Day) over a week ago, the Brighton-based trio arrive ostensibly po-faced and modest. Yet dissimilar to their prim temperament, it begins loud and brash and ends unafraid and dramatic. Husking over doom-tinged psych riffs, the group whip their bodies with their ruffled manes. Bell wails to a static, almost cowardly room. Their performance is untouchable and impassioned. They devote themselves to their sets and prove their potential extend further than the support slots they so frequently accept.
Parquet Courts saunter underneath muddy lighting and immediately address the venue’s timidity. The group’s power to incite well-mannered anarchy is undeniable. An accelerated Ducking and Dodging, a breakneck Master of My Craft stumbling into Borrowed Time; the group have cold-shouldered foreign chivalry for cultured abandonment. A stringent middle finger is extended to the hype machine as they heedlessly embargo a rendition of Stoned and Starving. Their personas are synched; amplified nonchalance.
New tracks such as Sunbathing Animal, Raw Milk and an extensive rendition of Into The Garden are churned out with visual disregard. Informing the on-site security that they can ‘hold their own’ against the flaying bodies slipping around their monitors was as necessary as it was subtly grudging. Yet beyond all this aggressive-chic-schtick and Linklater-malaise lays an essential audit of contemporary punk. The band have and are continuing to release very important music and play that music with backbone. Fuck social media – if DIY remains the root of artistic creativity then Parquet Courts are the harbingers of its future.
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Words: Tom Watson
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