Why is Parquet Courts’ Wide Awake! on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
Easily one of my favorite “new” finds of this decade.
What does Parquet Courts’ Wide Awake! mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Wide Awake! as it’s the first album by Parquet Courts that I happened to stumble across, and they’ve easily become one of my favorite “new” finds of this decade.
On that note, see also by Parquet Courts:
- Human Performance, #722 of best 1,000 albums ever
- Sunbathing Animal, #807 of best 1,000 albums ever
- There… might even be more coming, stay tuned!
And specifically, it’s the song “Total Football” that first got my attention. It’s such a great feeling, hearing a new kind of sound from a band that you hadn’t heard before, one that simply connects on that visceral hardwired level that tells us we don’t just admire or respect or kinda like this thing: we dig it.
“Total Football” also does this amazing thing where for about for the first 22 seconds, it plays at a moderate tempo with a really cool hook that tells you these are modern day garage alt rockers who mean business. But then right around that 22 second mark, the tempo picks up noticeably and kicks things into that proverbial next level gear. It’s just fantastic. And then smartly it does the same slower/faster dynamic near the end of the song as well.
“Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience” puts me of the mind that Parquet Courts – from an attitude standpoint if not from a musical dynamics standpoint – owe something to fellow New York City punk rock legends the Ramones. The tempo switch up thing is also fantastic on this one in transitioning from the “Almost Had to Start a Fight” part to the “In and Out of Patience” section.
“Violence” shows a little bit of range, bringing in some funk rock in addition to an experimental art rock-type thing that for some reason I could imagine playing during a strange interlude on the TV show, The Deuce.
“Before the Water Gets Too High” shows off the bands ability to slow things down to an extent while still maintaining a compelling and exciting vibe. Nice song construction and writing on this one.
Some stats & info about Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, New York Bands, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, Garage Rock, Punk Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 3.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Wide Awake! released? 2018
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #697 out of 1,000
Parquet Courts’ Wide Awake! on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.