Parquet Courts

Born out of the New York DIY scene in 2010, Parquet Courts' wonky garage rock draws from all sorts of art punk obscurities and psychedelic, counter-culture outposts, but at heart the group remain obsessive music nerds cutting and pasting together second hand, record store gems and crashing around at dingy basement gigs.

Growing up in the small town of Denton, Texas Andrew Savage played in various lo-fi, ramshackle indie and hardcore bands and enthusiastically absorbed crate-digging, fanzine culture, before heading to Brooklyn in search of art and music after leaving university. He gradually tempted old school friend Austin Brown to join him as joint front man and his younger brother Max took to the drums. Boston bass player Sean Yeaton later completed the line-up on their first self-released cassette album 'American Specialties' in 2011. Their tight, frantic post-punk chops drew from the likes of Wire, Devo and The Fall, but they also partly embodied the weirdness and trashiness of backwater America and told of mid-20s adulthood transitions and lonely, art-school outsiderness. A wave of hype and heap of critical approval propelled second album 'Light Up Gold' onto a wider audience but their minimal, scuzzy riffs and dead-pan, sarcastic delivery remained typically angular and taut on 'Sunbathing Animal' in 2014 and 'Content Nausea' in 2015. They went on to embrace warped Beefheart blues grooves, political snarls and Lou Reed's poetic, guttersnipe observations on 'Human Performance' before the band featured on Italian composer Daniele Luppi's 'Milano' and Andy Savage released his debut solo album 'Thawing Dawn' in 2017.

Working with hip-hop producer Danger Mouse, their sprawling array of influences widened further on 'Wide Awake!', with the band turning their hands to jaunty, dance-punk grooves on the album's title track and dreamy, mumbly 1960s psych-pop hooks on single 'Mardi Gras Beads'.