From the opening moments of Parquet Court’s first proper studio album Light Up Gold, the group already comes across as quite smug. Singer-songwriter Andrew Savage remarks in  a deadpan, languid timbre: “I got a gold medal, record time, gold record diamond mine.” And closes with, “A minute of your time? Forget about it.”
The conceited attitude of “Master of My Craft” is pardoned, as Parquet Courts has proven itself to be a defining garage-rock band, the caliber of which rarely comes around more than once every generation.
2012’s album Light Up Gold – a quick 15-track set with rarely a cut longer than 3 minutes – shows how brevity is key to Parquet Courts’ panache. The band’s surprisingly productive output feels abrasive and sudden at times, but superlative and memorable, nonetheless.
The propulsive, guitar-heavy life within Parquet Courts evokes early Strokes records, the haziness of Velvet Underground’s Loaded, or the all-around disarray of Pavement and Sonic Youth. But Parquet Courts defies a standard garage-rock archetype, as the dense, lyrical wit of frontmen Savage and Austin Brown surpasses any comparable group.
In “Borrowed Time,” Savage and Brown’s writings recall the metaphysical ponderings of Jim Morrison’s poetry: “I remember the feeling of the museless existence, of the drunk, bored, and listless; endless waiting for something I knew wasn’t coming.”
The title track of 2014’s Content Nausea is a brutal evisceration of our relentless fixation on technology and our stubbornness to recognize its profound influence. Similar in style to a beat poem with its flat, almost fatigued delivery, packed with surreal imagery and detailed malaise in equal measure, Savage intones: “This year it became harder to be tender/ Harder and harder to remember / Meeting a friend / Writing a letter / Being lost / Antique ritual / All lost to the ceremony of progress.”
He goes on: “And am I under some spell? And do my thoughts belong to me? Or just some slogan I ingested to save time?”
The band’s unparalleled skill at songwriting through dense, poetic layers and granular instrumentation is how it gets away with tracks about being “Stoned and Starving,” or naming its second album Sunbathing Animal after a song that chugs between two chords as Savage barks, “A SUN-bathing animal! A SUN-bathing animal! A SUN-bathing animal!”
Since the last time Parquet Courts visited Portland in 2014, the group has double-downed on its reputation of being a productive garage-rock collection, with 2014’s visceral Content Nausea (released under the homophonous moniker “Parkay Quarts,” due to the band’s fluctuating lineup) and last year’s Monastic Living, the cover art for which shows a monk, drawn in erratic squiggles, doing the dishes, serene as a Hindu cow.
The EP, an experimental, mostly-instrumental release that uses chopped-up and manipulated guitars with feedback squeals and simple rhythmic layers to tasteful effect, is a prelude to the band’s imminent full-length release Human Performance, which will come out on April 8 on Rough Trade Records.
Parquet Courts will visit Portland this Wednesday, Feb. 24 at the Wonder Ballroom (128 NE Russell St). Portland’s The Woolen Men will open. The event is all ages and tickets cost $15-$17. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here.
Listen to “Black and White” from Parquet Courts’ Sunbathing Animal below.