Human Performance sees Parquet Courts sprucing up their sound – although that says less about any mainstream ambitions the fiercely DIY Brooklyn band may have and more about the fact their previous albums sounded like they were recorded in the kind of rusting bean can Daniel Johnston might have rejected on the grounds of poor acoustics. So while this fifth album is tighter and cleaner, it’s far from chart-ready. Instead it wears its pre-punk to post-punk influences proudly: the title track’s tumbling melody could have been penned by Squeeze; Berlin Got Blurry is pumped up like prime Elvis Costello; One Man One City, with its bongo rhythm and psychedelic wigout, is as smart/dumb as James Murphy at his smartest/dumbest. Elsewhere, the coiled-up Two Dead Cops sees them tackle their country’s culture of violence (“Nobody cries in the ghetto for two dead cops”). If guitar music is condemned to skulk in the margins for the time being, it might as well do so sounding as spiky and agitated as this.
