If you, like most people, were underwhelmed by the latest Strokes album, try a band that take the scuzzy New York punk sound back to first principles.
Parquet Courts actually formed at university in Texas but now operate from the Big Apple, and it certainly sounds like it. The propulsive charge of Stoned and Starving could be about any struggling Brooklyn artist. If the rest of their debut album is open to charges of being derivative, it’s also so short (12 of its 15 tracks are less than three minutes long), so shouty and such fantastic fun that they’re easy to forgive. Released over here in late spring, Light Up Gold could do with more love being thrown its way before UK festival shows at Green Man and Reading this month, then a proper London headline set in the autumn. It’s certainly the best guitar album I’ve heard so far this year.
Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, EC2A 3PQ, Oct 28, 020 7422 7505, villageunderground.co.uk
