This week, WTSR Assistant Music Director Nelson Kelly, highlights some of the best new albums that the College’s own radio station, 91.3 FM WTSR, puts into its weekly rotation.
Band Name: Parquet Courts
Album Name: Human Performance
Hailing From: New York City, N.Y.
Genre: Garage Stoner Punk
Label: Rough Trade
Parquet Courts’s follow-up to last year’s experimental noise orgy album, “Monastic Living,” is a much welcomed return to form for the band. While it may not deliver on the same level as their 2012 opus, “Light Up Gold,” this new album is a very solid collection of songs. Stoned and starving as ever, Parquet Courts deliver its witty social comments and anxieties through its trademark, stripped-down style, complemented by vocalist Andrew Savage’s angry yet monotone droning. Rife with the usual feedback-drenched solos over a tight, upbeat rhythm section, “Human Performance” is the perfect album for fans who were worried about the bands direction over the past year. Though this album features tracks much longer than Parquet Courts standard one- to two-minute punk jams (“Dust” and the title track clock in at around four minutes each), shorter songs, like “Captive of the Sun” and “Outside,” are sure to please longtime fans and new listeners alike.
Must Hear: “Dust,” “Human Performance,” “Outside,” “Paraphrased,” “Steady On My Mind” and “Captive of the Sun”
Band Name: Tacocat
Album Name: Lost Time
Hailing From: Seattle, Wash.
Genre: Surfy Punk
Label: Hardly Art
The members of Tacocat describe themselves as feminists who like to have fun. Between its sweet palindrome of a name and these poppin’ tunes, I feel that vibe from them. “Lost Time” finds the girls (and one boy) in Tacocat as fun and bubbly as ever, with song topics ranging from “The X-Files” to the Internet, with a few break-up songs thrown in for good measure. As for its sound, think All Dogs but less snowy and more surfy. A solid rhythm section keeps the beat under crashing guitars and Emily Nokes’s totally tubular vocals. This album is fun and carefree from front to back.
Must Hear: “Dana Katherine Scully,” “I Love Seattle,” “The Internet” and “Talk”
