Parquet Courts has always been a band that stuck with me. There is something about their brand of Brooklyn-accented, urbanite, garage rock-tinged art punk that has always resonated with me. While the band never made any extremely significant changes in their formula, their discography to date has been quite consistent, they have even hinted at brilliance on occasion: it would be no exaggeration if I said that ‘Pretty Machines’ is one of my favorite songs of the decade. The band has carved out a unique sound for themselves which has ultimately served them quite well.

The lead single for the this album, the title track ‘Wide Awake’ seemed to signal something of a new direction for the band, being a vibrant new wave and dance-punk influenced track. The track hinted that the band was likely headed in a new direction, which was a hunch that turned out to be half right. Parquet Courts certainly experimented with divergent influences, but ‘Wide Awake’ is hardly indicative of the sound of the album as a whole.

kicks off with ‘Total Football,’ an aggressive, punky, and energetic track with lyrics that concern the current controversy over players kneeling during the national anthem and the greater implications of the controversy surrounding it. It tackles the topic with a great deal of ferocity and passion and does not sound contrived, forced, or dated in the way that political lyrics often do.

The second track on the album ‘Violence’ features yelpy vocals and lyrics concerning and criticizing the culture of violence in our society; the track is backed by a shimmering organ which actually works well with the punk vocals. Another standout track on the album is ‘Mardi Gras Beads,’ which features very pretty, chilled, dreamy guitars forming the basis for its instrumental and an equally dreamy vocal line that perfectly compliments it. ‘Freebird II’ is an anthemic track that is more soulful that most of the band’s output while also retaining a good deal of a punk edge, which is perfectly restrained in the context for the song.

the band adds another worthy entry into their already solid and consistent discography. The band does retain the better part of the formula that they’ve stuck to throughout their career though they do experiment with different influences. This is album that is very direct, engaging, and has a great deal of energy which never seems to slow down. Parquet Courts overall show no signs of slowing down with this album, which ultimately represents a very natural and fluid evolution of their sound.

Parquet Courts release full-length ‘Wide Awake!’

Brooklyn-based punk act the Men rose to a degree of prominence earlier in the decade with their 2011 effort 

, a gritty, straightforward punk record that received a great deal of praise among critics. They followed this up a year after with 

, which maintained the majority of the punk ethos as its predecessor while also incorporating a bevy of new influences into the mix, including but not limited to country, surf rock, americana, and classic rock. And for the most part, the mix worked pretty well; the combining of diverse influences within the album hardly ever seemed forced and made the album one of the more interesting punk releases in recent memory.

 a year later, an album that relied more heavily on the diverse influences found on 

and less on pure punk ethos. This album received more of a mixed reception than its predecessor, and for good reason. The album represented a bit of a forced evolution, as it seemed like the band was sonically evolving for the sake of evolving, with the diverse influences now being crammed into the album wherever the band could find a spot for them. Another year later, they followed up 

, which got nearly zero press and amounted to being nothing more than a slightly lesser version than the album that came before it. Then, two years later, they released 2016’s 

 which did nothing to break the cycle that the band has been on.

The story of this band has essentially been that of quantity over quality – with the exception of 2015 and 2017, the Men have released a new record every year of this decade with diminishing returns. Every additional album this band has released has brought less press, less acclaim, and less sales. Now, we have their new album 

, which was not so hotly anticipated by the broader music community – not a good start.

doesn’t really do anything to buck the trend that the band has been on musically, it is still a veritable mish-mash of diverse influences. The album starts with ‘Maybe I’m Crazy,’ a solid track build upon a bassy, light distorted, and warbly riff which does a good job at carrying the track, and ‘When I Held You in My Arms’ dabbles in straight balladry. However, the lyrics of these songs are just as predictable and boilerplate as their titles would suggest.

Some tracks on this album are simply directionless and underwritten. ‘Sleep,’ for instance, is built upon a repetitive blueglass riff and attempts a buildup in energy by the band slowly incorporating new sounds throughout implying a climax that never came. ‘Final Prayer’ is also a song that attempts to build a sense of atmosphere and drama but in the end just falls flat on its face.

The album does have some notable musical highlights, for instance the college rock-inspired ‘Rose on Top of the World’ is built around a very pretty acoustic riff and features a very pleasant vocal line and while wearing its influences on its sleeve, building upon them instead of deriving a second-rate version. On ‘Killed Someone,’ the band notably revisit their punk roots in a way which contrasts the rest of the album, and they pull it off somewhat well in relation to the rest of the output. A track that sounds like it could have been off one of their earlier albums is certainly a welcome addition to this effort and gives it an additional jolt of energy.

 is a listenable and musically diverse affair, but it does nothing to buck the trend of the Men being a jack of all trades, master of none. The album has its moments for sure, and there isn’t anything on this album that is objectionably bad, but also very little that is memorably good. For better or for worse, this album is a natural continuation of what this band has been doing for the better part of this decade.

The Men release full-length ‘Drift’

Post-rock titan Efrim Menuck, best known for his involvement in Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, has come back with his second solo outing 

. Coming almost seven years after his solo debut 

there were certainly questions over what direction this will go: Will it build off his previous solo effort? Will it build off his most recent work with Godspeed You! Black Emperor? Or will it take a different route entirely?

In essence, this album wound up being somewhat of a mesh between what he did on 

and what he did on later Godspeed You! Black Emperor efforts such as last year’s 

. This album primarily consists of the drone-y sonic landscapes one has come to expect from Menuck’s works, and the sounds of this album range from being calm and ethereal to more noisy and gritty, such as how the title track builds up into a noisy and fuzzy catharsis. But often these parts only partially succeeded in achieving the desired mood. Parts like the aforementioned track are often so fuzzy or lo-fi that they fail to capture any real sense of suspense, instead just assaulting the listener’s ears. The more ethereal parts of the album are more successful in achieving the calm mood they set out for, with the lo-fi aesthetic present on this album working to enhance it as opposed to undermine it.

However, like in Menuck’s previous solo effort, the music on this album had a much more prominent vocal component than his work with both Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion. Examples include tracks such as ‘A Lamb in the Land of Payday Loans’ and the opening track ‘Black Flags Ov Thee Holy Sonne.’

Quality-wise, this album leaves me extremely indifferent: There isn’t much wrong with it, but there isn’t much right with it either. Even after spinning this album many times, I honestly can barely remember much of it at all off the top of my head, there were no vocal melodies or instrumental passages from the album that were all that memorable. This album largely just goes in one ear and out the other. I had pretty much no problem with it, there was nothing that stuck out about the album as being overtly 

 rather it was just an extremely forgettable experience as a listener. This album is a recommended listen to the more hard-core fans of Menuck’s work, but not much more than that.

Efrim Menuck releases full-length ‘Pissing Stars’

[three_fourth]Weezer’s last two albums have been heralded as something of a return to form for them, receiving more acclaim than the vast majority – if not the entirety – of their post- 

 output among critics and fans alike. Many Weezer fans, including myself, felt that the dark age of Weezer was over, and that the band was beginning to go back to their roots and release music that embodies what people loved about the band to begin with. While Weezer’s previous two albums, 

), were not masterpieces, they were certainly some of the most solid LPs that Weezer has released since the turn of the millennium. When Weezer announced that they were going to release a new album, expectations were pretty high.

When I first heard the lead single from this album, “Feels Like Summer,” I immediately had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. This was, to put it bluntly, a bad song. It was hardly anything more than a pure pop track which served to do nothing but rehash pop tropes that went out of style five years ago; it had less of a rock edge than even most songs on 

. But then I thought to myself, their previous album turned out okay despite having “Thank God for Girls” as its lead single, that wound up being the weakest track on the entire album. I had some momentary reassurance. Then the next single off the album, “Mexican Fender,” came out, and my heart sank a little more. This track was a boilerplate, uninteresting pop-rock track with basic instrumentals and inane lyrics. Rivers literally sings “She loves me, she loves me, she loves me not” in the chorus of the song. At this point, I couldn’t even fall back on the example of 

 second single was the refreshing slice of diet 

But still, these were only two songs, two songs don’t define an entire album. ‘This album could still be decent,’ I thought. Then “Beach Boys” came out, and any and all expectations I had for this album were out the door. “Beach Boys” is simply another shallow, musically uninteresting pop song that has next-to-nothing to offer the listener. The song’s lyrics amounting to nothing more than “I like listening to The Beach Boys, The Beach Boys’ music is good.” The song simply does nothing but remind the listener that they could be listening to better music instead. But still, if I were Brian Wilson, I’d issue a cease-and-desist. Interestingly enough, if any of these three singles were on either of Weezer’s previous two albums, I would’ve dismissed them offhand as being filler, as just some half-baked ideas that only saw the light of day because the band wanted to get the album out. But these were not only just the singles, but the first three tracks on 

’s track listing. So, not only did Weezer decide to release these three lazy, underwritten pop songs as the singles from the album, but they decided that these are the tracks that should be placed in the forefront of the album to greet the listener, which was not a good sign.

The fourth single of this album, “Weekend Woman” is just as dull, lackluster, and underwritten as the singles that preceded it. The only thing remotely interesting about this track is a Beach Boys-influenced bridge (Rivers sure loves his Beach Boys), which seems to have been its own independent songwriting idea, as it is seemingly just thrown into the song abruptly with hardly any connection to the main body of the song, musically or lyrically.

The last single Weezer released from this album prior to the album’s release date was “Happy Hour,” which is an interesting entry in the Weezer catalog. The song centers around a laid-back vaporwave-esque electronic beat. However, the chilled vibe of the song disappears as soon as Rivers opens his mouth to awkwardly moan that he’s “like Stevie Ray Vaughan on the stage, high on music.”

The two tracks that follow these two on the album, “QB Blitz” and “Sweet Mary,” are two of the more instrumentally solid cuts off the album. But their instrumentals are still very basic and don’t do anything particularly interesting or memorable. “QB Blitz” is about the ever-relatable topic of being young and insecure about one’s social life. Rivers communicates this through odd metaphors that undermine the sadness and longing that he attempts to convey in this song, such as the prominent football metaphor in the chorus and title of the song.

The remainder of the album – that being the tracks “Get Right,” “La Mancha Screwjob,” and the closer “Any Friend of Diane’s” – are simply garden variety pop rock. Standard basic instrumentals, lyrics that are nothing to write home about, but aren’t overtly terrible (with the exception of the electropop tropes that were seemingly forced into “La Mancha Screwjob”).

 was a let down, especially given Weezer’s previous two albums represented a considerable uptick in quality from the majority of the band’s post- 

 output. This album is guilty of many of the flaws that defined some of Weezer’s worst output: uninteresting instrumentals, half-hearted infusion of modern pop sounds, and lyrics that teeter on being downright cringe worthy. This album is not the bottom of the barrel for Weezer (especially considering the fact that 

 exists), but it amounts to nothing other than just being standard, bland, least-common denominator pop rock, and Weezer has proven that they are capable of being much more than that, even at this point in their careers.

Stefanos Kiorpes