News / / 17.02.14

PARQUET COURTS

Electric Ballroom, Camden | 16 February

Last time we saw Eagulls play live was in a tiny room in our hometown of Bristol. We were a few pints in and more than a little excited by the handful of jaw-breaking, tooth-pulling post-punk tracks the Leeds rabble rousers had already released at that point. We were confronted by five precocious Northern lads who could have been mistaken for the cast of shit footie firm movie Away Days. There was a moshpit, we regressed.

They’ve been to America and everything now, and they even played on The David Letterman Show. So what’s changed? Nothing much apparently. Their singer still stares at the floor and jabs awkwardly at the audience between songs while his band laugh. They’re still just lads having fun, and they happen to be on a stage. But here, under the stage lights of Camden’s Electric Ballroom, it just doesn’t quite feel natural. Not the boys’ fault, but the sound isn’t right and the lights look silly – to the extent that singer George jokes about it. They rattle, undeterred, through the excellent Coffin, anxious punk rock singalong Tough Luck sounds weighty, and although it’s not like the record and we lose the dominating gothy bass line it still feels like the soundtrack to a cricket bat to the knees at a Leeds home game. Hype band? Saviours of British guitar music? Rotten imbeciles? Whatever. They’re great, they’re real and tonight, admittedly a few pints in again, we love them.

Parquet Courts don’t pull it off. They open with a dirgy mess and spend the first part of their set spewing out the kind of flaccid noise a hungover bunch of Dads would make when they’re doing their post-divorce “Hey, let’s get the old band back together!” bit. They pull it back a little with virtually flawless renditions of their Master of My Craft/Borrowed Time portmanteau banger and the ensuing chaos of Donuts Only and Yr No Stoner sees the crowd but there it is. These dudes look weird, we think it’s boring and, when faced with the undeniably real taste of suburban British culture we’ve just witnessed from Eagulls we can’t get over how this all sounds a bit too much like the overbearing slacker accents and white toothed Americanisms we’ve heard over and over again.

 

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Words: Billy Black

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