Parquet Courts are the kind of chronically chill band that has been exhaustingly compared to Pavement, but on the apathy barometer, Sunbathing Animal should be regarded in the shadow of bands like Television. Songs like “Dear Ramona” and “Always Back In Town” display the same kind of structural rigidity found on Marquee Moon. Parquet Courts are smart, sure, but their new record isn’t as smarmy as Light Up Gold, and its lyrics are more pointed. There are a lot of questions to be found on Sunbathing Animal, many of which are rhetorical and go unanswered. “How is agency built in a life unfulfilled?” Andrew Savage sings on “What Color Is Blood,” before circling around to the choral line, “Excuse me as I slip on out.” These aren’t lessons on living, but rather tales of evasion — displacing the question in favor of never finding an answer. –Gabriela [LISTEN]