#1278 Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal

The album's good. It's got some fun angles, strange textures, and an endless torrent of wonderfully batshit lyrics. Even if the tempo's a little too consistently languid, and half-ironic screeds like Dear Ramona feel thrown from glass houses, it's a totally good album.

But the Pavement angle really is unfair to music writers. Parquet Courts had a choice: you've got a frontman that sounds almost exactly like Stephen Malkmus, maybe don't make chuggy, angular, slightly absurd sunbaked proto-indie in all Pavement's favorite keys and tempos.

Do you know how hard it is, as an amateur and generally amateurish music writer, to avoid reviewing bands in terms of the bands they sound like?

Pros: will appeal to Pavement fans.

Cons: sounds too much like Pavement.

3.5/5