Wide Awake!
| Wide Awake! | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | May 18, 2018 | |||
| Recorded | Sonic Ranch (Tornillo, Texas) Electric Lady Studios (New York City) | |||
| Genre | Indie rock | |||
| Length | 38:37 | |||
| Language | English | |||
| Label | Rough Trade[1] | |||
| Producer | Danger Mouse | |||
| Parquet Courts chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Wide Awake! | ||||
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Wide Awake! (stylized as "Wide Awaaaaake!") is the sixth studio album by American indie rock band Parquet Courts, released on May 18, 2018 on Rough Trade Records.
The album was preceded by the singles "Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience", "Wide Awake", and "Mardi Gras Beads", and succeeded by the single "Total Football".
Background
[edit | edit source]The album was first announced in February 2018 and recorded from December 2017 to January 2018 at Sonic Ranch studios outside Tornillo, Texas. The band recruited Danger Mouse to produce the album, as the band claimed, as a way to push themselves outside of their comfort zone. On recruiting Danger Mouse for the album, Andrew Savage said, "I was writing a record that indebted to punk and funk, and Brian's a pop producer who's made some very polished records. I liked that it didn’t make sense."[2]
In an interview with Billboard, Andrew Savage described the album having a funk influence, saying, "there's this duality between joy and anger that I find to be really interesting, and that's something the record kind of deals with at large. ... [H]ardcore could be such an angry music form but could make you feel so positive. There's a lot of moments on the record when all of us are singing at the same time and... that's something I kind of associate with hardcore, or Funkadelic."[3]
Critical reception
[edit | edit source]| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AnyDecentMusic? | 8.3/10[4] |
| Metacritic | 82/100[5] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | StarStarStarHalf starFile:Star empty.svg[6] |
| The A.V. Club | B+[7] |
| The Independent | StarStarStarStarStar[8] |
| NME | StarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[9] |
| The Observer | StarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[10] |
| Pitchfork | 8.0/10[11] |
| Q | StarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[12] |
| Rolling Stone | StarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[13] |
| Uncut | 8/10[14] |
| Vice (Expert Witness) | A[15] |
Wide Awake! received critical acclaim upon its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 82, based on 28 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[5] In a five-star review, Emma Swan of DIY called the album, "a gut-punch of an immediate classic".[16] Writing for Exclaim! magazine, Vish Kanna said that Wide Awake! "is a letter-perfect musical contemplation of modern times, where social uprisings are actually affecting positive change. It's urgent and potent music that's thought-provoking and danceable, and whose rage is measured by a pointed optimism."[17] Roy Trakin, in a rave review for Variety, praised the album for its social conscience in its day and age, stating it "may be the most woke punk-rock record since the heyday of the Clash."[18] Will Hermes in Rolling Stone named Violence as a standout track and described it as "an epic rant about normalized barbarity".[13]
In a more mixed review, Chris Nelson of Mojo wrote that "unsurprisingly, it flies the Wire and Minutemen flags high. More surprising are the occasional nods to funk and '60s bubblegum."[19]
Wide Awake! was named 'album of the year' in an end-of-year list by Australian radio station Double J[20] and the second-best album of 2018 by Paste.[21]
Accolades
[edit | edit source]| Publication | Accolade | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| EarBuddy | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | 1[22]
|
| Double J | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | 1[20]
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| Drift | Top 100 Albums of 2018 | 11[23]
|
| Flavorwire | Top 25 Albums of 2018 | 5[24]
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| Flood Magazine | Top 25 Albums of 2018 | 5[25]
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| Fopp | Top 100 Albums of 2018 | 13[26]
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| God Is in the TV | Top 100 Albums of 2018 | 15[27]
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| The Music | Top 10 Albums of 2018 | 2[28]
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| MusicOMH | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | 17[29]
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| NME | Top 100 Albums of 2018 | 17[30]
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| No Ripcord | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | 7[31]
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| OOR | Top 20 Albums of 2018 | 15[32]
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| Paste | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | 2[21]
|
| The Skinny | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | 2[33]
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| Spin | Top 51 Albums of 2018 | 11[34]
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| Thrillist | Top 40 Albums of 2018 | 2[35]
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| Treble | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | 17[36]
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| Under the Radar | Top 100 Albums of 2018 | 8[37]
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Track listing
[edit | edit source]All tracks are written by Parquet Courts.
| No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Total Football" | A. Savage | 4:01 |
| 2. | "Violence" | A. Savage | 4:05 |
| 3. | "Before the Water Gets Too High" | A. Savage | 4:05 |
| 4. | "Mardi Gras Beads" | Brown | 2:43 |
| 5. | "Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience" | A. Savage | 3:14 |
| 6. | "Freebird II" | A. Savage | 2:55 |
| 7. | "Normalisation" | A. Savage | 2:11 |
| 8. | "Back to Earth" | Brown | 3:54 |
| 9. | "Wide Awake" | Brown, M. Savage, A. Savage, Yeaton | 2:38 |
| 10. | "NYC Observation" | A. Savage | 1:22 |
| 11. | "Extinction" | A. Savage | 1:41 |
| 12. | "Death Will Bring Change" | Brown | 2:42 |
| 13. | "Tenderness" | A. Savage | 3:06 |
| Total length: | 38:37 | ||
Personnel
[edit | edit source]Parquet Courts
[edit | edit source]- Austin Brown – guitar, vocals, keyboards on "Death Will Bring Change," "Back to Earth," and "Mardi Gras Beads"[38]
- A. Savage – guitar, vocals, keyboards on "Violence," "Freebird II," "Before the Water Gets Too High"
- Max Savage – percussion, vocals, synthesizer on "Total Football" and "Normalisation"
- Sean Yeaton – bass, vocals
Additional personnel
[edit | edit source]
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Charts
[edit | edit source]| Chart (2018) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA)[39] | 93 |
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[40] | 42 |
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)[41] | 117 |
| New Zealand Heatseeker Albums (RMNZ)[42] | 9 |
| Scottish Albums (OCC)[43] | 19 |
| Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[44] | 64 |
| UK Albums (OCC)[45] | 27 |
| US Billboard 200[46] | 122 |
References
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- ^ "Ultratop.be – Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
- ^ "Ultratop.be – Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
- ^ "Swisscharts.com – Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!". Hung Medien. Retrieved May 31, 2018.
- ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
- ^ "Parquet Courts Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
External links
[edit | edit source]- Wide Awake Archived 2018-06-24 at the Wayback Machine at Rough Trade
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