If you have yet to hear the new album Sunbathing Animal by Brooklyn indie-rock quartet Parquet Courts, “Black And White” is a great place to start. The second track from their sophomore long-player ignites with robust riffs and nasty amp distortion. But the rhythm section’s nervous, post-punk propulsions and the slightly out-of-tune slop strumming from Andrew Savage and Austin Brown reveal that the band still has a thing for Pavement’s thing for the Fall.
This is not to say that “Black And White” or any of the other songs on Animal hinge entirely on ’90s nostalgia. Instead, Parquet Courts build on those bygone slacker trappings to expand their songwriting into 21st-century realms of angst, paranoia, and exhaustion. It’s a noticeable contrast with the more whimsical and fun-loving tunes from their 2013 debut, Light up Gold.