Parquet Courts - 2016 - Human Performance

 

Rough Trade – RTRADCD810  279.06MB FLAC

Human Performance, released by Rough Trade in 2016, catches Parquet Courts at a point where the band’s wiry post-punk attack had expanded into something more spacious, melodic and emotionally exposed. The lineup of Andrew Savage, Austin Brown, Sean Yeaton and Max Savage still works with the clipped guitars, dry rhythms and talk-sung vocals that made the group immediately recognizable, but the record is less interested in simply sounding sharp or clever. Beneath the nervous energy is an album preoccupied with isolation, failed communication, memory, anxiety and the difficulty of being around other people without ever quite feeling synchronized with them.

“Dust” opens the record with an almost absurdly simple idea pushed until it becomes hypnotic. The riff circles while the vocal fixates on dust accumulating everywhere, turning something mundane into a kind of low-level existential irritation. The title track follows with one of the album’s strongest melodies. “Human Performance” is more vulnerable than the band’s earlier reputation for detached cool might suggest, with jangling guitars and a subdued vocal carrying the feeling of watching a relationship deteriorate while still being unable to step outside it.

“Outside!” and “I Was Just Here” are brief, concentrated pieces, while “Paraphrased” returns to the band’s more jagged rhythmic side. “Captive of the Sun” is one of the album’s most distinctive tracks, built around a repetitive pulse and an almost mechanical forward motion. Throughout the first half, Parquet Courts repeatedly move between tightly wound post-punk songs and pieces that feel looser and more conversational, which keeps the record from settling into a single tempo or mood.

“Steady on My Mind” slows everything down before “One Man No City” stretches past six minutes and gives the band room to wander. The track begins with a relatively simple groove but gradually opens into an extended instrumental section, showing how comfortable Parquet Courts had become letting repetition do the work. Rather than piling on more parts, they allow small guitar figures and rhythmic changes to accumulate.

“Berlin Got Blurry” is one of the album’s clearest pop moments, with a guitar line that feels unusually bright against lyrics rooted in dislocation and travel. “Keep It Even” and “Two Dead Cops” bring back the band’s sharper attack, while “Pathos Prairie” has a softer, almost weary quality. The closing “It’s Gonna Happen” ends the album without a dramatic resolution, which suits a record built around uncertainty. Human Performance spends more time observing instability than trying to solve it.

Andrew Savage and Austin Brown give the album two distinct writing and vocal personalities. Savage often sounds tense, dry and inward, while Brown’s songs tend to arrive from a slightly different angle, more melodic or casually detached. Sean Yeaton’s bass and Max Savage’s drumming keep the arrangements grounded, especially when the guitars begin pulling in opposite directions. The band’s strength lies in how much movement it can create from relatively simple parts.

The recording is clean enough for every instrument to remain distinct but still dry and immediate. There is very little gloss. Guitar strings scrape, drums sit close to the listener, and the vocals often sound almost conversational. That production suits the album because so much of Human Performance is about uncomfortable proximity: people being physically near one another while emotionally somewhere else.

The artwork continues that mixture of simplicity and unease. The front is dominated by blocks of blue and black lettering surrounding a deliberately flat, awkward interior scene. The back features a crude potted-tree drawing beneath the phrase “DID I EVEN DESERVE IT?” The visual language resembles construction paper, classroom art and homemade collage, but the emotional tone underneath it is darker. The inside uses handwritten-looking credits and a repeating row of distorted faces, reinforcing the album’s interest in people, repetition and discomfort.

This Oakland Public Library copy carries Main Library labels, classification stickers, barcode markings and a library hub sticker on the disc. The institutional markings overlap the original artwork, but the deliberately rough design absorbs them surprisingly well.

Human Performance is one of Parquet Courts’ strongest records because it balances the band’s intelligence with something less protected. The humor and angular guitar playing are still there, but so are loneliness, frustration and genuine uncertainty. It is a post-punk record with plenty of sharp edges, yet its most lasting moments come from the places where those defenses start to crack.

—ChatGPT