Parlour Tricks' Medals is a collection of raw post-punk recordings that feels a few years displaced. It's a melding of a few different things, but those things are almost unimportant. What it most sounds like, in this given context, is like a few talented and like-minded friends jamming together in a garage. They noodled around and started finding some common ground, a meeting of the pseudo-spontaneity of punk and the more high-minded and open nature of anything labeled "post-."
I don't know if that's what it is. I suppose I could ask. Given that Medals is a Post-Echo release, it certainly supports that - band member W. Heyward Sims is also Devereaux, a project with a Post-Echo album due in the fall.
An introduction isn't necessary, though. The music tells the story itself. It betrays familiarity, and a shared appreciation of a certain sound. This sound had a time; our current time doesn't have much of this sound. Fortunately, Medals is refreshing in its nostalgia, and quite good besides.
Medals is a solid post-punk dozen. Any of the twelve songs can be plucked out and appreciated, though each with enough tricks to make the uniformity in sound more of a setting than a whole, monotonous, one-trick pony. Some highlights include opening salvo "Entropy" and the quick-lipped "Radio Out" (a tad bit of Refused-y funk punk), the sturdy, single-quality "Frequency," throaty throwback "Red" and the reverb-happy, very finale-feeling "Down In The Minefield Of A Memory."
One of my favorite qualities in any medium is proper ambition, which can be better (and more favorably) described as a self-awareness and a vision that doesn't overreach. It's okay to be fun, or consistent, or just plain good. Medals is each of those.
Medals is also available from Post-Echo in bronze, silver, and gold vinyl, which is fun, in addition to their Future-Proof format.
