Week of 1/6: Dinosaur Jr., Parquet Courts, Father John Misty
Eli continues his descent into X'er elitism, Michael weighs in on Parquet Courts' role as music for male partners, and Eric is happy to be won back by Father John Misty.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him), Eric Bennett (they/them), Michael Brooks (he/him) and Miranda Reinert (she/her). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. On Substack, we’re also a weekly roundup of songs. Our format is simple: each of our four hosts picks a song they love and writes about it. There will be one free post every week, and more at the end of every month for paid subscribers. For the sake of your wallet, don’t start a paid subscription on Substack. Instead, sign up at the 2$ tier or higher on Patreon and we will gift you a subscription.
Dinosaur Jr. - “Sludgefeast”
Eli Enis:
I’m considering becoming one of those guys who bleats about how the ‘80s and the early ‘90s were the hilt of all underground rock music. Anyone who’s known me, my taste, and/or the stuff I’ve written about for the last half-decade probably would say that doesn’t sound like me. That is correct, it doesn’t. But I’m going through a phase, mom. As recently as a month ago, I would’ve told you that the ‘80s were just not a decade of music that I particularly cared for. Save for thrash metal, I was never very interested in ‘80s punk, college rock, new-wave, rap, pop, etc. during my developing years, and as I became an Indie Rock Guy in college, I spent my time trying to digest the ‘90s, 2000s, and the 2010s stuff happening around me. The ‘80s weren’t a blind spot, per se. I had enough of an understanding about the decade to acknowledge the myriad sounds that developed during its ten-year-block and how they influenced everything else going forward. Obviously, the ‘80s were an important decade for music. I was never denying that. I was just scrambling for so many years to play catch-up and keep my finger of the pulse of The Now that I quite literally never felt like I had the time to do a proper dive.
For the last couple months, I’ve been fascinated by that time period. It all started about a year ago when I finally decided to deep dive into the Sonic Youth catalog, which I’ve spent the last year patiently working through (I’ve still got a long way to go before I feel like I have a genuine working knowledge of their discog). For so many years, I put off listening to them because A) I was intimidated by their mountain of material and B) because they’re so canonized that I almost felt like I could “get” them without actually having to listen to them all that much, given their widespread influence on so much of the last three decades of underground rock. But when I finally started listening to Goo, I realized that, no, actually, that’s not the case. They’re certainly influential in that there are countless bands who borrow from the noisiness of their guitars, driving rhythms, and stoic vocals, but no one actually sounds like them. It was one of those situations where I finally picked up the rock I had been stepping over every morning for the last 10 years and realized that there was a whole world underneath that catered to my exact sonic sensibilities. They’ve quickly become one of my favorite bands and I haven’t even heard all of their LP’s yet.
Then, a couple weeks back I finally started reading the copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life that I impulse-bought sometime during the first leg of the pandemic but never got around to reading (I’m trying to read more books this year, and so far I’m doin’ pretty good). This is a book that many of my peers probably read in high-school or college, but reading it at 27, and at the place I’m currently at in my lifelong listening journey, has actually been really interesting to me. If I picked this up when I was several years younger, it likely would’ve set me on a completely different musical course. I probably would’ve listened to a ton more old shit and missed so much of the stuff happening around me that I’m now thankful to have lived through, so one day I can talk about the scene politics of 2010s emo and indie the way Michael Azerrad does about the ‘80s. But I think I’m currently in the midst of a noticeable shift in my listening habits. I still listen to a fuck-ton of new shit — for work, for this podcast, and for my own pleasure — but I listened to more old shit in 2021 than ever before. Tons of ‘90s, 2000s, and early 2010s hardcore that I wasn’t familiar with. Suicide and Mission of Burma. Older Madlib and J Dilla. A fuck-ton of ‘80s/’90s metal and grunge for work. Since I was 15 or 16, my sole mission with music has been to militantly consume as much current stuff as possible so I can be in the know, but now I’m feeling myself letting go of that impulse so I can have a better, more informed, understanding of music history in general.
Our Band Could Be Your Life has been revelatory in that sense. I’ve known about and listened to all of the bands in the book at some point, but gaining the perspective about the indie underground in that era has given me a whole new outlook on the music. The violent, scuzzy, dangerous live show circuit yielded music that has a true, ugly aggression to it. It has a feel to it that’s simply missing from a lot of indie-rock from the late ‘90s til now. Even the shit I love, it’s just different. Sonic Youth, Husker Du, the early Dinosaur Jr. stuff, Black Flag and Minor Threat, of course. It just …. hits in a way that few contemporary punk, indie, and hardcore bands just don’t. Not that it’s necessarily better, but in a lot of ways I think it is.
Obviously, I do this podcast. I’ve been writing about modern rock music for roughly a decade. I’m a staunch defender of the notion that Rock Isn’t Dead. I’ll always have a specific affinity for rock of the last 20 years, and the last 10 in particular. But listening back to the shit all of those aforementioned bands were doing 30, 40 years ago, I’m kind of like, well, it’s been done. Most indie-rock bands now are rehashing what’s already been done. That’s always been something I’ve implicitly acknowledged and is kind of a common understanding among indie listeners of my age. Again, not that there isn’t room for innovation, but besides offering a different generational lyrical perspective and harnessing newer production techniques, what’s a post-punk, noise-rock, art-rock, hardcore punk or blown-out fuzzy power-pop band of today doing that the pioneering acts of the ‘80s and early ‘90s haven’t already done? Again, I like so much of that shit. It’s most of my music taste. But I think the answer is honestly, “not much.” And that’s OK! But giving a good-faith, focused listen to the source material for the first time in my life has been quite eye-opening for me. Let’s just say I get what 30, 40, 50-something (and 25-year-olds with the taste of 40-somethings) mean when they shrug at so much of the modern rock underground. Wail on your fuzz-loaded guitar all you want (and I will, joyfully) — you’re never going to do it like Sonic Youth and Dino J. I fucking love stupidly heavy, beefed-up modern metallic hardcore. Can’t get enough of a fuming mosh part. Does any of it capture the primal ferocity of the Bad Brains and the Minor Threat seven-inches? I say this with an air of despondency, but honestly, probably not.
Anyways, this is the tip I’ve been on for the last couple weeks. I’m sure my winds will shift once again. And if anything, this leg of my journey has only reinforced how special bands like Spirit of the Beehive are to me, who take songwriting cues from the last 70 years of popular music and meld it with the tools of the present to make something wholly original across all generations. But holy shit, when it comes to guitar-bass-drums rock with thrusting urgency and spitfire might, it really doesn’t get much better “Sludgefeast.” Sorry, Ovlov.
Parquet Courts - “Walking at a Downtown Pace”
Michael Brooks:
With 2021 in the rearview mirror, I figured now would be the perfect time to do a little bit of cleaning house here at Endless Scroll headquarters. Last year, I had a couple of ideas for this newsletter (the one you’re reading right now!) that never saw the light of day, and I wanted to pay tribute to one of them that’s very near and dear to my heart: Parquet Courts and Boyfriend Music
I had never thought about Parquet Courts as “boyfriend music” until my wonderful co-host Miranda described them as much. But, to be fair, I haven’t spent all that much time thinking about Parquet Courts in general. I remember Light Up Gold being a thing way back when, but I was never really all that interested in the band and whatever it is that they do for one reason or another. Their follow up, Sunbathing Animal, came out in 2014–the same year that I turned 21 years old—so forgive me if my mind was a bit preoccupied with Run the Jewels 2, Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1 and My Krazy Life at that period in time. By the time Human Performance came out, Parquet Courts’ album from 2016, I was already two records behind and I guess I felt like I didn’t have the time or the energy to play catch up with the band, and in that moment I accepted that maybe I would always have a Parquet Courts blind spot. But something about “boyfriend music” and Eli’s impassioned Parquet Courts blurb in this newsletter made me want to give the band a chance.
So, my idea for the newsletter was to write a “Letter to the Editor” style post where I was going to pretend to be a frustrated reader who just couldn’t make heads or tails of Parquet Courts. You’re probably asking yourself right now, “Well hey, that sounds pretty cool actually, how come you never wrote it?” and the reason is because after listening to multiple Parquet Courts albums I have no opinion whatsoever on their music! Every day I see so many people online rattling off one hot take after another and think to myself that it must be exhausting having that many opinions on everything—as a matter of fact I think the one thing holding me back from ever being a truly great music critic is my total indifference towards 90% of the stuff that I come across. When I listened to “Walking at a Downtown Pace” for the first I wasn’t asking for a revelatory experience or anything like that, I just needed the song to elicit some kind of response from me, but if I were to earnestly try to sit down and write about it I’m afraid whatever I might come up with would be phoned in.
I don’t think that Parquet Courts are boring in a bad way, but I guess if I’m being honest I do think that they are kind of boring, and in some weird way I think that actually makes them perfect boyfriend music. They’re boring in a way that’s almost kind of comforting—like staying in for the night and busting out a bottle of wine to play board games with the love of your life or snuggling up on the couch to binge watch Dickinson or whatever. When love comes knocking on my door again and I decide to settle down into a boring existence I think I might have to give Parquet Courts another shot.
Father John Misty - “Bored in the USA” / “Funny Girl”
Eric Bennett:
Despite not being sold on Father John Misty’s last few records, Josh Tillman has won me back with “Funny Girl,” the first single from his upcoming Chloe and the Next Twentieth Century. Before falling off around the time of 2017’s Pure Comedy, I held Tillman’s project in high regard. Having recently revisited I Love You, Honeybear, I’m thrilled to see how well it holds up. One of my favorite moments on that record is the purposefully overwrought ballad to our nation’s decline, “Bored in the USA.” It’s one of those songs that I can remember where I was when I first heard it.
I had gotten to a college class early and watched the Letterman performance on my phone in the empty classroom. In the video, Misty begins seated at a piano, only to stop, turning to the camera a minute in, revealing the piano is playing itself. A simple trick, but one that amused me. The song’s incredibly lush string section, combined with the richness of Tillman’s voice, won me over. It was likely jarring to some fans for him to move on from his psychedelic folk pastiche into music made for performing in a suit, but it felt natural having seen the song rolled out live. Now, with “Funny Girl” we have come full circle, back to the sounds and influences of I Love You, Honeybear. We again find Tillman slumped over on his piano keys, sonically leaning into his inner Scott Walker. The song is just as wistful in its presentation as “Bored in the USA'' and just as acidic despite the old Hollywood luster covering each of them.