It starts with a punch, takes it up a notch and just never lets go. Light Up Gold is pure lightning in a bottle; an evergreen half-an-hour, if ever we’ve heard one.
New York City via Denton, Texas rock band Parquet Courts had been making some pretty interesting moves around 2010/2011, releasing their limited debut LP - American Specialties - with the band’s Andrew Savage also releasing two albums as the duo Fergus & Geronimo, but, the Light Up Gold album was absolutely their breakout moment and defining early statement. First self-released and later reissued to wider attention, it quickly became a landmark of the era’s independent rock landscape. An absolute firecracker.
The material for Light Up Gold came together quickly, driven by the band’s early live schedule and a shared drive for taut, minimal songwriting. They rattle through an impressive fifteen songs in thirty-two minutes. Written in rehearsal spaces across Brooklyn, the quartet favoured immediacy over polish. This would be mirrored in the recording process too, tracking the album live with engineer Jonathan Schenke at The Plateau, aiming to capture the momentum and looseness of their performances. The production retained the rough edges — guitars pushed forward, rhythm section dry and insistent. The band emphasised pace: short structures, minimal overdubs, and a refusal to linger on any idea longer than necessary.
From word-of-mouth success to widespread critical acclaim, Light Up Gold would quickly become one of the era’s defining albums. Master of My Craft sets the tone, its clipped guitars circling around Andrew Savage’s dry delivery of “sophisticated paper talk” and the memorably offhand closer, “Socrates died in the fucking gutter.” Borrowed Time tightens the screws further, all forward motion and wiry rhythms, while Donuts Only flashes by in under two minutes with the band’s signature blend of humour and agitation. Yr No Stoner and N. Dakota introduce a more laconic sway, Austin Brown’s vocals drifting across jangling, Velvet Underground-leaning arrangements. Caster of Worthless Spells pushes into ramshackle post-punk, and Disney P.T. taps into itchy, Pavement-style slackness without ever feeling derivative. Throughout the album, lyrics land quickly and conversationally: bored observations, wry self-assessments, and sudden, oddly poignant images. Stoned and Starving is the centrepiece, a seven-minute sprawl that turns a simple bodega trip into a looping internal monologue (“I was walking through Ridgewood, Queens…”) as guitars stretch toward Television-like tangles. The title track closes things out with a burst of anxious optimism, tying together the album’s mix of sardonic wit, bristling momentum, and sharply etched detail.
It was, it is, and it looks likely to always be a compelling listen. Frantic, funny, smart, impulsive and all just blasted out onto the tape. Arguably the best album of Drift’s lifetime, if you want a little pump on a Sunday, this is a perfect Sunday Classic.
In April 2016, we interviewed Andrew Savage about Record Shops for issue ten of Deluxe. He kindly created a cover for us too, our first Grammy Award winner I believe! You can read that in full below.