Parquet Courts – Sunbathing Animal

There’s an uneasy cheeriness in the way Andrew Savage utters “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” towards the end of Instant Dissassembly’s naggingly repetitious seven minutes, ten songs into Parquet Courts’ addictively disquieting third LP. Their world’s widened since 2012 breakthrough, Light Up Gold, but much of Sunbathing Animal proves that the Brooklyners remain at their most comfortable making listeners feel a breath from suffocation.

Guitar tones are so clean they’re chapped raw, while the spiking percussion lies like a bed of nails underneath the record’s exterior, most notable on the sadistically chipper What Color Is Blood? and sticking out jaggedly amongst Always Back In Town’s tumbling hooks. The tension throughout is palpable, only fully released on the title-track, which rips and tears apart the cloying claustrophobia as Savage spits belligerently over the top. This is no huge departure from Parquet Courts, it makes for another brilliantly jarring experience nonetheless. [Simon Jay Catling]