Parquet Courts - Wide Awake!
Critic Score
Based on 35 reviews
2018 Ratings: #23 / 890
Year End Rank: #13
User Score
2018 Rank: #28
Liked by 283 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Independent
In range, energy and freshness, this may be their best album yet.
100
Louder Than War
This is probably their most accessible effort to date and should hit all the clubs with it’s punk funk sound and disparate theme. One of the best albums this year!
100
The Skinny

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.

100
DIY
For a band who’ve riffed on sounding inwardly jaded so impeccably for so long, ‘Wide Awake!’ is a gut-punch of an immediate classic.
90
The Line of Best Fit

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.

90
Northern Transmissions
‘Wide Awake!’ is the sound of band unafraid to push themselves, both creatively and socio-politically. In these uncertain, homogenised times – God bless Parquet Courts.
90
The Needle Drop

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.

90
Exclaim!

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

90
No Ripcord

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.

90
Drowned in Sound

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.

87
GIGsoup

'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.

85
Under the Radar
The proclamation that this is currently the world's most exciting rock band was suggested a couple years ago, now Parquet Courts have claimed the throne.
85
The 405

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.

83
A.V. Club

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.

80
Q Magazine

Chaotic, visionary, and righteously pissed off, Wide Awake! feels like the perfect rock record for the times.

80
Gigwise
It gets better, luckily, straight away.
80
FLOOD Magazine

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.

80
Dork
Eight years in, it wouldn’t be surprising if Parquet Courts were running out of steam. Thankfully ‘Wide Awake!’ proves there’s plenty of fuel left in the tank.
80
The Observer

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.

80
Pitchfork

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.

80
Crack Magazine
It’s their angriest work, and yet it’s their most polished. It’s quite possibly their best.
80
Clash
An album that feels, in this moment at least, like a watershed of sorts for the band, 'Wide Awake!' sees them begin to deliver on promises they have been making for half a decade and more. A brutally funny, scuzzy and lacking-in-seriousness affair, it truly is one of the most entertaining New York guitar albums of modern times.
80
Loud and Quiet
Parquet Courts have always been adept at transcending their slacker forebearers, and ‘Wide Awake’ is yet more proof of their burgeoning legacy.
80
Slant Magazine

With Wide Awake!, Parquet Courts treats both figurative and literal forward motion as a cathartic act.

80
Rolling Stone

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.

80
NME
If 2012’s ‘Light Up Gold’ woke the world up to a group that many touted as the latest answer to The Strokes, ‘Wide Awake!’ is an indelible underlining of their status as one of the most important bands in the world right now.
80
Tiny Mix Tapes

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.

70
AllMusic

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.

70
musicOMH

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.

55
Spectrum Culture

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.

andiov1
72

The Super Bowl's tomorrow so I just wanted to say fuck Tom Brady in advance

ElectricMess
90

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.

ST4T1C
80

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

78

Some absolute slappers on here.

Raygiik
90

The track wide awake fucks so fucking hard the album was at least an 80 just on that

Nukeproofbear
93

Top tier dad rock.

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Added on: February 22, 2018