Light Up Gold [LP]

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold [LP]

Originally released in 2012 Light Up Gold is being made available via Rough Trade Records on November 28 2025. Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts first proper LP - is a dynamic and diverse foray into the back alleys of the American DIY underground. Bright guitars swirl serpentine over looping groovy post-punk bass lines and drums that border on robotic precision. While the initial rawness of the band's early output remains the songwriting has gracefully evolved. Primary wordsmiths A. Savage and Austin Brown combine for a dynamic lyrical experience one part an erudite overflow of ideas the other an exercise in laid-back observation. Lyrically dense the poetry is in how it flows along with the melody often times as locked-in as the rhythm section. "This record is for the over-socialized victims of the 1990's 'you can be anything you want' Nickelodeon-induced lethargy that ran away from home not out of any wide-eyed big city daydream but just out of a subconscious return to America's scandalous origin" writes Savage in the album's scratched-out liner notes. Recorded in an ice-box practice space Light Up Gold is equally indebted to Krautrock The Fall and a slew of contemporaries like Tyvek and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Though made up of Texan transplants Parquet Courts are a New York band. Throw out the countless shallow Brooklyn bands of the blase 2000's: Light Up Gold is a conscious effort to draw from the rich culture of the city - the bands like Sonic Youth Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground that are not from New York but of it. A panoramic landscape of dilapidated corner-stores and crowded apartments is superimposed over bare-bones Americana leaving little room for romance or sentiment. It's punk it's American it's New York... it's the color of something you were looking for. A1. Master of My Craft A2. Borrowed Time A3. Donuts Only A4. Yr No Stoner A5. Yonder Is Closer to the Heart A6. Careers in Combat A7. Light Up Gold I A8. Light Up Gold II A9. N Dakota B1. Stoned and Starving B2. No Ideas B3. Caster of Worthless Spells B4. Disney PT B5. Tears of Plenty B6. Picture of Health