On “No No No!”, the opener of Parquet Courts’ new mini-LP Monastic Living, Andrew Savage declares in a mangled grunt, “I don’t want to be called a poet/ Don’t want to hang in a museum/ Don’t want to be cited, tacked onto your cause/ No, no, no/ I’m just a man.” From a band who’ve typically resisted disenchantment against the odds, it’s an alarming statement of rejection. On 2012’s Light Up Gold, Savage and co-songwriter Austin Brown blazed through mundane minutiae–”train death paintings, anti-meth murals”–yet saw beauty in the banality; on last year’s “Content Nausea”, released as Parkay Quarts, Savage yelled denunciations of the digital era in excited bursts, like a smalltown newsreader reporting alien landings. Pitched between stoner gags and urgent instructions, their sizzling one-liners felt like a bulwark against capitalist dread, the battle between righteousness and resignation. Monastic Living, their debut EP for Rough Trade presumably ahead of a full-length in the new year, is them saying, “We’re tired, that’s enough.”
“No No No!” is unique to the record, in that it has words, a hook, a rhythm you could tap, a sonic and philosophical destination, and replay value. In the liner notes, the track’s expanded lyric sheet blends cliché (“We’re just a band,” “retreat into solitude”) and aphorism—”Perhaps silence is purity of spirit”—into a grave mission statement. The remaining eight tracks aren’t just wordless but tuneless; they’re sometimes baffling, often boring, and always deliberately so.
Part of what makes “No No No!” work is that its litany of targets—”open letters, long reads”—is broad enough to appeal to everyone’s digital unease. Parquet Courts are resolutely unchill (“Life’s lived best when scrolling least,” Savage sang on “Content Nausea”), bewildered by the hot takes and the jostling think-pieces, as are we all. But these are popular targets, and without the counterweight of wit, Parquet Courts’ grand disavowal feels reactionary. On Monastic Living, they make a personal decision to reject a web culture constantly renegotiating what it means to be socially conscious (“I don’t want to be an essayist!” begins Savage’s salvo), and in doing so they reclaim art’s right to political neutrality. As statements go, it’s fine but hardly revolutionary—a passionate shrug.
Redeeming moments in the music are scarce. One is “Vow of Silence”, with its clattering drums, pleading, squealing guitars, and haywire arpeggios, which resemble the misfiring pistons of a manic brain. “Alms for the Poor”, comprising several seconds of a postpunk riff that dies suddenly, sounds like the husk of a practice session; a chugging number called “Monastic Living I.” is Battles without the epiphanies.
Unlike that paragon of artistic rejection, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which actually coheres rather nicely, the EP has little textural detail; the music is not immersive, much less transcendent. It isn’t just a score to modern ennui but a work that itself feels indifferent. Yet it’s presented with a straight face: The band are touring the EP and we can buy it, though I’m unsure why anyone would—perhaps its existence as a paid-for product is part of the statement. What it means for the band’s future is, for now, a mystery, though not the kind it is fun to unravel.
The Fat Angel Sings 