Parquet Courts - Mardi Gras Beads

In their 2016 album, Human Performance, Parquet Courts break through as one of the most mature bands in contemporary punk rock music. If their previous efforts were energetic and raging guitars that sang the anxieties of young men, in Human Performance, there was a broader exploration on themes and sounds, which made them stand out from any other similar band.

In Wide Awake, their newest record, the band keeps maturing and expanding their limits. No matter if the Mardi Gras beads are mostly associated with partying hard, they are able to use them as a metaphor of fading passion in a relationship (the bright paint will peel off, and they'll only be a reminder of a more exciting time), to get to new grounds for the band, actually to somewhere that we never thought they'd get to: the rock ballad domain.

But there's nothing syrupy or cheap here; the band restricts and controls their riffs and by they focus on deliver on point slow paced rock that is as smart and mordent as anything they have delivered, but with a melancholy that makes this track closer to The Velvet Underground than to Coldplay. It's a mature and sophisticated nostalgic trip, a new evolution for a band that is now more focused in the disillusion than in the rage; they have grown up but the promised wisdom of adulthood still hasn't arrived.

There's a feeling of longing in these riffs, as if we were contemplating the Mardi Gras parade in front row, but we weren't able to connect with it. As if the long awaited party has failed to fulfill our expectations and yet we are there, with colourful beads around our necks, but in a state of disembodied trance, as if we have realised that we're watching the wrong movie but found no point on getting out of the cinema. Parquet Courts is still a punk band by heart, and if they still find time to be irreverent and yell some truths, they have also found out that the reflections on the self are a quite potent statement.