Like most people over 30, the Chop has a very certain and specific taste in music. We know exactly what we like and recognize it when we hear it. Now, we could do what most of our parents’ generation does and just put it on cruise control and listen to Pavement and the Vaselines and Archers of Loaf from now until forever. But sometimes it’s nice to hear bands from this decade, you know?
Which is why we’re heading over to the Ottobar tonight to check out Parquet Courts.
PC’s Debut LP Light Up Gold was released in August 2012, with Pitchfork naming it one of 2013’s Overlooked Records. And it is easy to overlook: just by virtue of being the first record by some band from Brooklyn it’s enough to make most Baltimoreans shrug and look around for the next thing, but once you hear it it becomes a lot tougher to overlook. We’ve been spinning it about twice a week since we got our hands on it and there’s no sign of that pace slowing down anytime soon.
There are a few people here in Baltimore who remember seeing the White Stripes at the Davis Street Talking Head in about 2002 or whenever it was. We didn’t go to that show, but we kind of wish we had now that Jack White’s a superfamous rock star and all. It would be kind of cool to tell your kids ‘Oh yeah I saw Jack White in front of 30 people for like $6 and got drunk on Boh and pissed on his van in the alley.’
That’s the kind of band Parquet Courts is: the kind with limitless potential. It’s quite possible that after moving from Texas to NYC and switching from releasing music on cassette to vinyl/digital that they could follow a career arc similar to say, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Death Cab for Cutie.
If Parquet Courts was a stock we’d say buy. If they were a horse we’d say bet them to win. If they were a baseball prospect they’d be Manny Machado. That’s how highly we rate them. This is, after all, the first band we’ve heard in a long while that reminds us a little of the Minutemen.
Just a little.
But if you know how great the Minutemen were then you know that anyone who’s ever tried to imitate them has sooner or later hung their head in shame because ain’t nobody gonna do it like D Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley.
Parquet Courts jam econo at the Ottobar tonight with fellow Brooklynites Woods and local talent Sal Bando and Small Apartments. Doors at 8, show at 9- all ages.