Parquet Courts is a vibrant indie-punk revival band based in Brooklyn, although all members of the quartet originally hail from Texas. Wide Awake is their sixth studio album, recorded and produced with Brain Burton (aka Danger Mouse). This album sits in an interesting place in Parquet Courts discography, each song moves a bit farther from their classic sound but somehow still holds fast to their original roots. Songs like “Almost Had to Start Are a Fight/In and Out of Patience” are reminiscent of their earlier album releases like Light-Up Gold and Monostatic Living but other songs, obviously pushed by Burton’s production are foreign to Parquet Courts sound. This wide array of sounds and themes, held together by lively punk influences and wrapped in beautiful production results to an exciting listen. Listening to this album for the first time leaves you sitting on the edge of your chair, waiting for the next track, chorus, or verse, as literally anything can happen.

Wide Awake’s lyrics are contemporary, biting, and well needed. Songs on this album address a wide array of problems in the United States, from poverty in New York City, white guilt, violence and school shootings in America, emotional reactions to the right-wing, the obliviousness of extreme climate change, and the oppression of minorities. For example, the song “Total Football” decries America’s treatment of blacks and the controversy of football players kneeling during the national anthem, with singer Andrew Savage stating “It is dishonest, nay, a sin to stand for any anthem that attempts to drown out the roar of oppression”. The song “Violence” is an analysis of the constant fetishization of violence in America, while simultaneously and hypocritically being a call to arms to dismantle the profit of violence through police and prison T.V. shows. Andrew Savage addresses this irony, screaming

“Allow me to ponder the role I play

In this pornographic spectacle of black death

[Violence] once a solution and a problem”

While this album is punk at its core, there is so much more to it than fast paced guitars and aggressive drumming. Each song exists within its own personal sonic world. That’s not to say that each track is completely isolated in the album, the album as a whole flows beautifully, each track is connected by its contempt and grievances of American society. However, each song is distinct with its own palette of sounds. Thanks to the production from Danger Mouse, the wide arrange of sounds is simultaneously full and energizing. Even arguably the worst song on the album is interesting; “Before the Water Gets Too High”, a gloomy krautrock punk song about climate change, is filled with a heavy droning Omnichord throughout the entire song, an obvious metaphor for the constant, ceaseless threat of climate change.

Wide Awake is one of those albums that I wish I could listen to for the first time, every time. It’s exciting, it’s motivational, it’s devastating, it’s depressing, it’s whiny, it’s grumpy, it’s happy, it’s angry, it’s brilliant. I will venture to say that Wide Awake is Parquet Court’s best release so far, and the best punk rock album of this decade –nay– century.