If there’s one thing I’ve learned in many years spent listening to music, it’s this: If you’re going to honor your idols by means of rank cannibalism, you are best advised to bury the skeletons afterwards, and deep. Which brings us to the strange case of Parquet Courts’ 2016 release Human Performance, which has sent the critics of our planet into unseemly paroxysms of rapturous praise. And I get it—Human Performance is an excellent LP in its way.
But I have my reservations. Because—and here’s where the cannibalism comes in—while I respect Human Performance for what it is, I can’t help but hear echoes, and more echoes, of other bands, better bands, and these echoes come damn close to ruining my listening pleasure altogether. The Velvet Underground, the Talking Heads, Devo, Beck, Pavement, Pere Ubu, even Jimi Hendrix, for Christ’s sake—I can hear them all in what is less an album than a flawed attempt at musical transubstantiation. Parquet Courts wears its influences on its sleeve, instead of picking up spade and shovel and making sure its mass grave is deep enough.
The first step towards killing one’s idols is by aping them; to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, imitation is the sincerest form of homicide. But after the dirty deed has been performed, one must be careful to wash the blood off one’s hands and then move on. And I thought Parquet Courts had done just that on the noisy and experimental 2015 “Monastic Living” EP. True, the critics universally panned it, but the EP had a metal machine heart and the guys in Parquet Courts should have taken all that critical carping as a signpost that they were on the right path.
Anyway. “I Was Just Here” sounds to my ears like a direct rip of the Talking Heads and Devo; it combines David Byrne’s nervous tics and wide-eyed alienation with the herky-jerky rhythms of the band that wore flower pots as hats. And I can’t help but hear echoes of the Talking Heads’ frontman’s paranoid fixation on the mundane on “Dust” as well. As for the admittedly wonderful “One Man No City,” it fuses Byrne’s vocal style with the most direct rip on the Velvet Underground you will ever hear. That wiry Lou Reed guitar solo! And those Mo Tucker drums! I mean, it may be compulsively listenable, but the VU should be collecting royalties on the number.
As for “Captive of the Sun” it abides by your basic Beck template, while “Steady on My Mind” evokes both the Velvet Underground and Pavement. And the vocals on “Human Performance” constitute, oddly enough, the best Jimi Hendrix imitation I’ve heard in years. And “Paraphrased” brings to mind classic Pere Ubu.
I could go on, but I won’t. Look, I’m willing to consider the horrible possibility that I’m wrong about all of this. My brother is the only person I know who believes Parquet Courts’ earlier LPs are superior to Human Performance. Admittedly, Parquet Courts’ latest LP includes its fair share of tunes that don’t bear the echoes of their predecessors, and as I’ve said before, even the ones that sound “borrowed” are likeable enough even so. And yet.
The bottom line is this: I may prefer 2014’s twin releases, Sunbathing Animal and Content Nausea—the guitar freak-out on the former LP’s “Black and White” makes me happier than anything on Human Performance, as do “Every Day It Starts” and the stately “Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth” from the latter album—but hey, that’s just me. Human Performance is a very good album; I just wish it didn’t strike me as second-hand. An argument can certainly be made that at this late date everybody is imitating somebody else. All I ask is they not rub our noses in the fact.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
