Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold [ROUGH TRADE]

Why you'll love it

This is the album that made Parquet Courts, back on vinyl from Rough Trade. It holds a Metacritic score of 84, NME gave it 9 out of 10, and Rolling Stone said the band packed "the whole history of indie rock into the lickety-split guitar zone outs."

This edition

• Rough Trade pressing (cat# RT0490LP)
• Fifteen tracks, the original running order
• Produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Jonathan Schenke

About the album

Andrew Savage first put Light Up Gold out on his own Dull Tools label in August 2012. Word got round Brooklyn, then everywhere else, and What's Your Rupture? reissued it in January 2013. The four of them (Savage and Austin Brown on guitars and vocals, Sean Yeaton on bass, Max Savage on drums) had made a record that NME, Pitchfork and Spin all scored 8 out of 10 or better, which for a second album on a homemade label is quite the introduction.

The songs are short, smart and very funny. "Master of My Craft" opens with a riff that feels like a door being kicked in, "Borrowed Time" is a perfect two-and-a-half minutes of jangle, and "Stoned and Starving," five minutes of a hungry man wandering the neighbourhood trying to decide what to eat, became the band's signature. Jonathan Schenke produced, recorded, mixed and mastered it, so it all sounds of a piece.

Thirty-three minutes, fifteen songs, no filler. It is roughly the length of a lunch break, and considerably more productive.

Tracklist

Listen

On Rough Trade (cat# RT0490LP), a reissue of the 2012 album.