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Sep 7, 2016Examining the duality of our motivations and emotions elevates Parquet Courts above most of their peers. Not only do they avoid the Vinyl-style embalming of their source material, but the songs transcend the romanticized hipster baggage that the city--and Brooklyn in particular--currently carries with it.
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Apr 12, 2016Nearly every cut on Human Performance--from the quaking paranoia of the album opener “Dust” to the brooding resignation of the closer “It’s Gonna Happen”--finds Parquet Courts exploring fresh sounds and reaching new heights in the process.
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Apr 8, 2016Human Performance as a whole feels less rigid (and abrasive) and more personal in how it deals with restlessness and dread.
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Apr 12, 2016While Parquet Courts show here that they can tackle lost love brilliantly, some of the more interesting lyrics come from those where they portray the less tangible mental issues that are rife in modern society.
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Apr 11, 2016A vacuum that sucks you in and dumps you among the dust you tried to sweep away. And from the dunes of that dust emerge a band well in their stride.
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Apr 4, 2016Cut for cut, this is a triumph of melody and intelligence, with hooks that aren't cute and noise that doesn't dampen introspection, cosmic and prosaic at the same time. Parquet Courts have conquered rock 'n' roll's biggest hurdle: to move forward while staying true to themselves
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Apr 8, 2016At its best, Human Performance is Parquet Courts in a mellower, heart-stopping Velvet Underground mode, but it is also at turns upbeat and funny, sensitive and odd. Compositionally, these are the most dynamic Parquet Courts songs yet.
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Apr 8, 2016Parquet Courts may have just released their most realized, independent, and articulate album yet.
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Apr 8, 2016For all their obvious musical ability, the band’s real skill here is blending so many unexpected elements into a coherent whole that is at once adventurous and accessible, even if--or maybe because--you have to hustle a little to keep up.
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Apr 22, 2016Although there’s nothing as lyrically sharp as Content Nausea, as raucous as Sunbathing Animal or as brash as Light Up Gold, Human Performance hits all the right notes for a band with a lot of ground to cover.
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Apr 15, 2016Human Performance is the first album you could describe as your typical Parquet Courts record--it gathers their best tricks in one place, along with new ones you wouldn't see coming.
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Apr 15, 2016Human Performance sees Parquet Courts deliver ideas with laser accuracy.
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Apr 14, 2016So while this fifth album is tighter and cleaner, it’s far from chart-ready. Instead it wears its pre-punk to post-punk influences proudly.
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Apr 8, 2016What makes Human Performance a narrowly great record is that it bucks narrative. It’s not their most sensitive record or politically astute or least dissonant but all of these things--their most convincing performance as humans to date.
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Apr 8, 2016It’s easy to simply pore over Savage’s frantic wordplay--which peaks when evaluating kebab-wrapping techniques on ‘Berlin Got Blurry’--but the music is equally brilliant.
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Apr 7, 2016There are no radical departures from past albums, but this is the most crisply recorded and varied Parquet Courts record yet. Musical ideas hinted at previously appear here in full color.
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Apr 7, 2016Sunbathing Animal began the process with great success, and Human Performance shows that the band is just as vital and alive when it dials the intensity (way) down, cleans up some of the messy parts, and generally grows up in all the right ways.
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Apr 6, 2016With Human Performance, Parquet Courts have managed to cram in a lot. Lesser bands might have made a mess attempting a project like this, but what separates Parquet Courts is their adaptability and understanding of the subject matter.
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Apr 5, 2016Fortunately, throughout the rest of the album, the band writes songs that allow them to excel as they stay well within their limitations. These are tight, economical pop songs actually worthy of Pavement comparisons in terms of not just sound, but melody.
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Apr 4, 2016A tightrope walk between impulse and laser-point precision, Human Performance is Parquet Courts at their most knotted.
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Q MagazineMar 29, 2016Parquet Courts have delivered a fifth full-length album that ticks every box on the application form [for an uber-cool New York band of the Velvet Underground/Sonic Youth lineage]. [May 2016, p.114]
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Mar 29, 2016Human Performance might have sacrificed the band's rickety immediacy, but they compensate with wise, grass-stalk chewing authority and grubby, plentiful hooks.
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Apr 28, 2016Moderating the spellbinding verbosity that saturated previous high-water marks like "Ducking & Dodging" from 2014's Sunbathing Animal gives this latest batch more space to develop and marinate.
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Apr 8, 2016Parquet Courts are confessing to their own messiness and, in doing so, have delivered their most fully realized project to date: a disillusioned work whose allure reaches far beyond the instruments being strummed on it.
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Apr 6, 2016If I find any fault with Human Performance, it’s that things start to get a bit uninspired toward the end.
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Apr 6, 2016What the other releases do so well is that they either hit the spot hard or deliberately miss for effect, but this time round the result seems to be somewhere in between.
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Apr 11, 2016There’s still a degree of inconsistency: I Was Just Here is unpleasantly jarring, the wilfully flat vocal delivery not adding to its charm. But there are enough highs to make this worthy of a listen.
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MojoMar 29, 2016Though inconsistent, the quartet have siphoned the best of punk and '90s slacker pop to create an album that couldn't be any more Rough Trade if it tried. [May 2016, p.94]
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UncutMar 29, 2016They're still a little too in thrall to the obvious precursors to take flight, but there are some great, clanging pop songs here, too. [May 2016, p.78]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 39 out of 45
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Mixed: 4 out of 45
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Negative: 2 out of 45
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Apr 15, 2016
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Apr 8, 2016