Parquet Courts
– Human Performance
There’s a frayed nerve running through Human Performance, and Parquet Courts tug it like they’re daring you to flinch. This is a record made by smart people who’ve read too many books and still can’t sleep. It’s New York anxiety carved into guitar lines, art punk draped in thrift-store neurosis. Gone is the scrappy minimalism of Light Up Gold—this one stretches further, bends stranger, and stares longer into the mirror. But it still bites.
Andrew Savage’s deadpan delivery now shuffles between dry wit and genuine ache. The detachment is still there, but it’s cracked. You can hear the humanity leak through the cynicism, and that’s where the album finds its edge. There’s love, fear, obsession, depression—and instead of posturing, they dig in. It’s not punk as rebellion anymore; it’s punk as survival mechanism.
Musically, the band still jangles, jerks, and shuffles like a subway car with a busted wheel. But now they’re unafraid to slow down, stretch out, and let weirdness simmer. Keyboards wheeze. Guitars spiral. Percussion pokes at you like a persistent thought. It’s more considered, but not clean. Human Performance is messier in a way that feels honest—four guys standing in the rubble of modern life and trying to write it down before they forget what it felt like.
Choice Tracks
Dust
It opens the record with a mantra as mundane as it is suffocating: “Dust is everywhere. Sweep.” The groove is minimal but claustrophobic. It loops like a brain stuck on one thought too long. You want it to break—but it doesn’t. That’s the point.
Human Performance
The emotional core. A breakup song that doesn’t yell or blame—it just sits in the wreckage, blinking. Savage delivers each line like he’s still figuring it out as he says it. The guitars shimmer like bad memories, soft and slightly warped.
Outside
A twitchy, rhythmic number that captures the album’s ability to make unrest sound danceable. It’s got one foot in Devo territory, but it doesn’t feel retro. It’s that moment when cabin fever starts to feel oddly productive.
Berlin Got Blurry
The closest thing to swagger on the record, if you can call existential dread swagger. There’s a honky-tonk strut to the riff, but it’s undercut by the feeling of being hopelessly lost in a city that should feel familiar. Romantic alienation in 3 minutes flat.
One Man No City
This one stretches out into full-on jam territory—hypnotic bassline, chiming guitars, mounting tension. It builds, falls apart, then builds again. It’s like watching someone try to explain themselves and failing spectacularly in real time. Beautifully messy.
Human Performance doesn’t scream for your attention—it mutters, paces, and occasionally shouts into a pillow. It’s jagged, vulnerable, funny in that you-have-to-laugh-or-you’ll-cry kind of way. Parquet Courts made an album for people who are fraying quietly, but still showing up. That’s more punk than most punks ever get.