Parquet Courts - Human Performance

Parquet Courts’ reputation for nonchalance sometimes threatens to overshadow everything else. Camera shy and dishing out barbed-wire-tongued statements like there’s no tomorrow, they’ve built their modest empire on stern faces and steely resolve.

As ‘Dust’ kicks ‘Human Performance’ with all the cocksure arrogance of a spaghetti western, that attitude still clearly rules the roost. There’s a knowing wink to it this time around, though - scorched guitars lead the way, but an almost comic bassy bounce backs them up. It’s indicative of ‘Human Performance’’s one-two of the serious and the silly – for every deranged and pitch-black ‘I Was Just There’, there’s a ‘No Man, No City’, perking up the grimy sentiment with the best (and most unexpected) inclusion of bongos you’ll hear this side of that Wagner bloke off X Factor.