Brooklyn hodgepodge post-punk act
Parquet Courts' 2012 debut,
Light Up Gold, was met with almost across-the-board accolades and comparisons to city punk luminaries ranging from
Television to
the Fall to
Sonic Youth. The album was a blast of gritty fresh air, with each song taking a slightly different model of experimentalism from artists who came before and molding it into something unique and fitting of the album's urban-feeling patchwork. Along with contemporaries like
Protomartyr and
Speedy Ortiz,
Parquet Courts stood out as leaders of a new wave of bands born of the D.I.Y. basement show culture but with a backbone of incredibly strong, diverse songwriting.
Tally All the Things That You Broke acts as more of a footnote or afterward to
Light Up Gold than any type of follow-up. This stopgap EP's five tunes speed by, with highlights like "You've Got Me Wonderin' Now" and "The More It Works" following the same blueprint as the album, finding a midway point between
Pavement,
Television Personalities, and the itchy, nervous punk rhythms of the late-'80s SST catalog. The stumbly rhythm and delay effects experimentalism of "Fall on Yr Face" give way to more than seven minutes of "He's Seein' Paths," a budget drum machine jam that borrows its vibe from
Beck's "Loser" and builds from fun, into monotony, and back into something fun once more. While not quite as brilliant as the debut, this EP is a serviceable extension of the sound the band began there. Less of a preview of things to come than a few extra songs,
Tally All the Things That You Broke still offers enjoyable evidence of what makes
Parquet Courts unique and exciting. ~ Fred Thomas