PARQUET COURTS レコード& CD

Review: Apparently not content with releasing one of the most buzzed-about records of the year so far in Sunbathing Animal, the NYC-based square-pegs have hammered out another, more experimental record under the name Parkay Quarts. Yet the songwriting flair of frontmen Andrew Jackson and Austin Brown has always been a result of a strange collision between infectious hooks and jarring dissonance, and the more jammed-out and unpredictable terrain of this album maintains their cockeyed charm and propensity for memorable slacker tunesmanship. Comparisons to Pavement might be more valid than anyone realised, as on the evidence of 'Content Nausea' they share that iconic band's strange and beguiling ability to turn base eccentricity into gold.

Review: It's Parquet Courts, but not as you necessarily know them. Seven albums in and the Brooklyn hipster punks prove they are more vital and adventurous than ever, delivering an 11-strong collection of songs that straddle genres and explore ideas effortlessly. A triumphant return to the release schedule to say the least.

Just take 'Marathon of Anger', for example. If you didn't look at what was playing everyone should and would forgive you for thinking this is some forgotten Talking Heads effort that deserved to be remembered. The fact it's smack bang in between the gritty, post-punk-edged 'Black Widow Spider', and the jaunty, artsy rock 'n' roll of 'Just Shadows', is precisely what we're talking about. Highly original and utterly unforgettable, Sympathy for Life is the kind of record that keeps giving, on every play, and feels built to stand the test of time.

Review: Light Up Gold gets a fitting do-over here, with Parquet Courts' most treasured trophy piece built in the spirit of nostalgia when it was released back in 2013. Now presented on luminous vinyl, eight years on the work will still conjures a sense of pre-responsibility first year at university, skint but smiling because life, and the mid-30s paunch, hadn't got to us yet.

Pitchfork once described Parquet Courts as "slackers in an almost classical sense", and the phrase is so accurate. A swill of post punk, kebab stain of DIY indie, and plenty of affectation, the band's lackadaisical responses to pretty much any request imaginable are almost audible. Don't fight them, though - history keeps teaching us that in the end youth will always win out against age. As such the best advice is to jump in feet first, like the first house party of a new semester.

Review: Having displayed a somewhat wayward and scattershot approach of late, 'Human Performance' is where Parquet Courts go right back to hitting the bullseye in extremis, using their infectious songcraft and rough-hewn charm on this collection of skewed and anthemic ditties to deliver a cocktail of equal parts mischief and malice, pop melody and DIY punk. Wry lyrical insights, incisive guitar hooks and omnipresent joie-de-vivre coalesce to provide further evidence that this Brooklyn outfit - beyond being a Pavement for millennials - are currently about as close as one can get to a new generation of indie-rock royalty.

Review: The third album by the endearingly scrappy garage-bound Brooklynites shows them expanding somewhat on their original template, which took a gnarled and irascible racket and tempered it with Pavement-style eccentricities and freewheeling pop sass. "Sunbathing Animals", which is a full quarter-hour longer than their last effort, sets their stall out as a contemporary rock band whose lyrical sleight-of-hand, melodic suss and wry charm marks them out as a band worth taking seriously as more than another bunch of angry young men. Spiky as ever, yet with skill and strength in depth previously unsuspected, Parquet Courts are slackers to be reckoned with.