The Growth of Andrew Savage
Four albums deep into their career, my favorite band, Parquet Courts, released their most personally-affecting album. Not pushing at the outsides of art, nor self-reflective to the point of admission, Parquet Courts' fourth LP can be summed up by the song "Tenderness," which closes the album. In it, Andrew Savage, the co-frontman of the quartet tries to break down some of the scaffolding any of us have constructed by our 30s. A distinct moment on this record occurs after a rumbling catapult from the two-part song "Almost Had to Start a Fight," and "In and Out of Patience," pummel us with the realization that there's nothing black and white about living in the chaos dimension and to look for meaning is futile, literally transitioning halfway through from mono to stereo, and addressing the idea of self-doubt and how we handle it. "This next one's called Freebird II!" Savage announces to a faux-live audience before a distinctly th...