Parquet Courts are a Brooklyn band, but don’t hold that against them – they barrel forward with a singleness of purpose that cuts through the pseudo-intellectual fluff that a lot of borough bands seem to wallow in. Right from the kickoff, this album does not tiptoe around why it came; “Master My Craft” is as straight-forward as a gunshot and as catchy as a coronavirus. Leadoff single “Borrowed Time” flows naturally from the ending, creating the greatest one-two punch of the year, easily. The fifteen tracks contained here have a shockingly high percentage of gold embedded in them – the album only really lags once or twice briefly, most notably on the sort-of-slow “Yr No Stoner”. Andrew Savage and company really do master their craft here: the songs are tight, ridiculously catchy, and (with the exception of the five-minute ode to the munchies “Stoned and Starving”) less than three-and-a-half minutes in length. As a debut album this is an auspicious start; I’ve had this one on my heavy rotation list since I first caught “Borrowed Time” on satellite radio earlier this year. This is minimalism that manages to say more in half an hour than some artists manage in their entire career. Thank all the gods that Whats Your Rupture? decided to rerelease it (it was originally released in 2012 on the tiny Dull Tools label), because it’s going to be a presence on my year-end list for sure.
Structures Capable Of Joy 