Parquet Courts: Sunbathing Animal [ROUGH TRADE]

Why you'll love it

This pressing comes in a gatefold jacket with a download card. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield heard a band that had grown up fast since Light Up Gold, and the album averaged 78 on Metacritic across 35 reviews.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Download card included

About the album

Parquet Courts wrote Sunbathing Animal on the road, in between long runs of touring behind Light Up Gold, and recorded it in three sessions squeezed into the gaps. Andrew Savage, Austin Brown, Sean Yeaton and Max Savage cut it on half-inch tape at Seaside Lounge in Brooklyn and Outlier Inn in upstate New York, and the theme they kept circling back to was the pull between freedom and captivity.

The songs range wide. "Black & White" is a wiry, sprinting rocker, "Dear Ramona" and "What Color Is Blood" have a loose, laconic swagger, and the title track goes off like a firework, all clattering drums and breathless words. "Instant Disassembly" slows things to a seven-minute crawl, and "Raw Milk" and "Into The Garden" close the record in a hazy, reflective mood. The lyrics come first and sit right at the front of the mix.

Pitchfork later placed it at No. 140 on its list of the 200 best albums of the 2010s. Not bad for a record made in the gaps between tours, rather like a sandwich eaten in the van.

Also at Kops: more Parquet Courts on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Rough Trade / What's Your Rupture? (cat# RTRADLP 710), the 2014 album.