In its 13 tracks and just shy of 40 minutes, Wide Awake! shows perhaps the band's broadest emotional range to date with a healthy dollop of anger on display. There is rather a lot to be angry about right now, but Parquet Courts remind us to, at least, dance and have a good time, despite the impending apocalypse.
Unfortunately, Wide Awake! isn’t Parquet Courts’ best album. However, the correct conclusion here would be to repeat what Robert Christgau once said about The Clash’s Sandinista: “if this is their worst - which it is, I think - they must be, er, the world's greatest rock and roll band.” On this evidence, Parquet Courts deserve similar plaudits.
Not only is Wide Awake! better performed and written than any Parquet Courts album thus far, but on it the band consistently manages to make interesting artistic statements on some very difficult topics.
Wide Awake! is a letter-perfect musical contemplation of modern times, where social uprisings are actually affecting positive change. It's urgent and potent music that's thought-provoking and danceable, and whose rage is measured by a pointed optimism
That ability for them to effortlessly switch between their influences - whether that’s hardcore, Minutemen or Talking Heads - while also sounding unlike anyone else is why Parquet Courts remain one of the most interesting indie acts around.
Truly, Wide Awake! is a success all round - the joyous sound of a band taking everything that makes them great and amplifying it, toying with it and producing something even greater.
'Wide Awake!' is a bold step for Parquet Courts - it's acerbic, acidic, utterly powerful and stands as a genuinely important album in the otherwise paradoxically timid world of modern rock.
We’re ultimately left with the feeling that Parquet Courts are fighting their way through life on Wide Awake!; battling ignorance, standing up against inequality, staving off depression – and they want you to join them in their struggle. Their vocal frustrations make perfect fodder for their post-punk blasts, and in combination they add up to some of the most invigorating music currently being created, making Wide Awake! a valuable and vital call to arms.
Moving through righteous anger to introspection and eventually melancholic hope ... Wide Awake! is a full arc of an album, one that captures both Parquet Courts’ usual keyed-up exasperation and their new, hard-earned optimism.
Chaotic, visionary, and righteously pissed off, Wide Awake! feels like the perfect rock record for the times.
Wide Awake! finds Parquet Courts spreading themselves in multiple genres, developing as many formulas as possible for corporeal mobility—and by that, I mean not just dancing, but physical reactions, from excitement’s range of kicking and screaming to pliés of joy.
Wide Awake! might be too scattershot to appeal to a much wider audience, but it does cement Parquet Courts’ position as one of US indie’s more intriguing outliers.
On their sixth album, Parquet Courts enlist Danger Mouse to produce an album of joyfully absurd, danceable rock music. It is straightforward but alien, simple but endlessly referential.
With Wide Awake!, Parquet Courts treats both figurative and literal forward motion as a cathartic act.
Wide Awake! is the sort of reality-reckoning many of us have been having on a daily basis lately. In place of the usual Parquet Courts concerns – oblique self-analysis, post-graduate existential ennui, meta-rock references, girl problems – are big-picture anxieties and flabbergasted outrage.
Wide Awake! is the album in which America’s most consistent punk band once again distill their myriad influences, this time with a whole new list of reasons why their minds never push the brakes.
Those who are open to hearing the band take on a variety of styles and bend them to their will should be very happy with Wide Awake! Those who want the band to crank out an album of just bitter, bopping punk may have to wait until next time.
Wide Awake is certainly not their best, but it is their most wide ranging and as such, it could just be one that splits the hardcore fanbase right down the middle.
Parquet Courts makes an honest effort to switch things up and explore new dimensions of their music. That they fail isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but it’s an unfortunate reminder of the limits of what this band can do.
Dance-punk is alive and well. Parquet Courts' latest is bursting at the seams with playfully angry energy, to the point where you worry the whole thing will explode. It's almost too easy to miss some of the clever wordplay and lyricism and just get caught up in the spirit of Wide Awake! Color me impressed.
IM WIDE AWAKE!!!!
MOVIN AND GROOVIN AND I AINT EVER LOOSIN THE PACE!!!!
“Wide Awake!” Is a banger of an indie rock album. Takes elements of Talking Heads and modernizes them to a point where the songs are still bangers while still capturing that magic. Tracks like “Total Football”, “Violence”, “Freebird II” & “Wide Awake” being some of the best examples of the bangers on this album. I will say, I feel like some songs on here ... read more
1 | Total Football 4:01 | 94 |
2 | Violence 4:05 | 90 |
3 | Before the Water Gets Too High 4:05 | 87 |
4 | Mardi Gras Beads 2:43 | 87 |
5 | Almost Had to Start a Fight / In and Out of Patience 3:14 | 94 |
6 | Freebird II 2:55 | 91 |
7 | Normalization 2:11 | 86 |
8 | Back to Earth 3:54 | 86 |
9 | Wide Awake 2:38 | 91 |
10 | NYC Observation 1:22 | 82 |
11 | Extinction 1:41 | 86 |
12 | Death Will Bring Change 2:42 | 87 |
13 | Tenderness 3:06 | 92 |
#1 | / | Double J |
#1 | / | Earbuddy |
#2 | / | Paste |
#2 | / | The Music |
#2 | / | The Skinny |
#2 | / | Thrillist |
#3 | / | Northern Transmissions |
#5 | / | Flavorwire |
#5 | / | FLOOD |
#5 | / | Q Magazine |