Parquet Courts and Snail Mail
The more people and pundits proclaim that Rock is Dead, the more rock bands seems to pour out of New York City by way of counterpoint. It’s been a gradual but steady rise up the rock charts for Parquet Courts, who made an inauspicious recorded debut in 2011 with American Specialties, a competent but fairly paint-by-number effort that few seemed to notice or comment on. Number two picked up some critical praise, and their third album made it to number 55 on the Billboard chart.
Their fourth full-length, Content Nausea, was a bit of a stumble, featuring only half of the band (due to “other commitments”) and released under an alternate name, Parkay Quarts, a moniker that also graced a bizarre one-off single called “Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth.” The core quartet regrouped again for an experimental mostly-instrumental EP that was so off the wall that many discographies don’t even mention it. However, something about signing to the Rough Trade label seems to have finally inspired them to find and build on a distinct, if still generic, radio friendly setlist that can be counted on to bring the T-shirt buying, lighter-hoisting rock and roll crowd to the Music Box on January 21. They’ve released two albums with the label, the newest this past May, both of them packed with the same kind of odes, earworms, and anthems that are sure to grace countless golden oldie playlists of the mid-21st century. The bill includes Baltimore-based Snail Mail, the solo rock project of teen guitar whiz Lindsey Jordan.