TRACK MARKS BEST OF 2016: “Berlin Got Blurry” by Parquet Courts

Non-story of 2016: How good some regular ol’ dude-fronted rock bands were. (That is non-news of such little consequence I’m surprised the New York Times didn’t cover it.) I quite enjoyed the albums of Car Seat Headrest, Public Access T.V., Modern Baseball, and, of course, Parquet Courts.

Parquet Courts is a little different from the others in that half the time they seem like they’re just screwing around. Well, they always seem like they’re at least partially screwing around, but half the time it feels like the joke is on me. But then, when they get the chance to focus up, they come up with something like “Berlin Got Blurry,” and I want to shake them and ask them why they don’t write songs like that all the damn time.

It has, like the best Parquet Courts songs, references to food—fries, hot dogs, ketchup, and, since it’s about being a foreigner traveling in Berlin, döner. But between the travelogue of treats, the band drops really elegant bits of wisdom (“It feels so effortless to be a stranger/But feeling foreign is such a lonely habit”) or really well-crafted lines (love the internal rhyming of “Kind ears captive to the beers you’ve purchased”).

It’s not deep, but it’s upbeat, moving along at a jaunty pace. Like being a stranger in a strange land, it’s fun for a short time.

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