Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 2

Speaking of being woke, Parquet Courts are wide awake.  Listen, they'll tell you so on their song Wide Awake from their album Wide Awake.

Some of the best music of the past 30 years, from The Talking Heads on, was made when punk rockers discover funk.  Give some punks a roomful of percussion instruments and let them explore polyrhythm, and fun just spontaneously erupts.  That's apparently what happened to Brooklyn's Parquet Courts in New Orleans, as their excellent 2018 LP Wide Awake is chock-full of second-line bounce, call-and-response lyrics, and totally woke lyrics.  "It is dishonest, nay a sin, to stand for any anthem that attempts to drown out the roar of oppression," they sing, and "Those who find discomfort in your goals of liberation will be issued no apology." And that's all from just the first song, Total Football.   

We said at the beginning of this series that 2018 was not the best year for music, but any year that produces an album like Wide Awake has nothing to be ashamed of.  Parquet Courts have been one of our favorite bands for a few years now, and Wide Awake is their best, most ambitious, and most audacious album yet.  In the past, they've offered their take on slacker/stoner rock, on hard-core punk, on country-punk ballads, and various other genres, and on Wide Awake they show that they're brave enough, smart enough, and ballsy enough to take on almost anything.  This is a Top Seven song list and the song Wide Awake takes the number two spot, but if this were a Top Seven album list, Wide Awake would easily take the Number One spot.  That and we think we've got a crush on Andrew Savage and we're not even gay.

If you need any more validation, it's a testament to the broad appeal of this song that it's reportedly Ellen Degeneres' favorite of 2018.

OMG, we just rewatched this video the day after posting it, and noticed that's harpist Mary Lattimore, who we just saw opening for and performing with Lonnie Holley, in the background.