THE idea of the four members of a band as a gang is the exact type of guitar music cliche that Parquet Courts love to subvert.

Like calling a song ‘Freebird II’ on your latest album Wide Awake because of the famous old heckle. Or bringing in one of the world’s most successful producers to produce your latest record.

The band’s new album Wide Awake presents a bold step forward for them. The jittery guitars and anxiety-strewn lyrics remain. However, musically it’s indebted to funk, Afro-beat and hardcore.

From the title track’s evisceration of performative “wokeness” to ‘Total Football’ and its use of the Dutch national soccer team’s revolutionary tactics in the 1970s to comment on collectivism, Wide Awake is music with as much emphasis on the brain as the hips.

It’s a communal record, the type a band in control of their own career feels comfortable making. There’s also an increased level of participation from all four members, as well as their first time working with an outside producer in Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells mastermind Brian ‘Danger Mouse’ Burton.

‘Wide Awake’ simmers with the rage and malcontent anger of living in 2018, but shies away from unnecessary cynicism. “I can’t count how many times I’ve been outdone by nihilism,” sings A. Savage on album closer ‘Tenderness’, a cry for optimism in a time where pessimism often seems like the far easier option.

Over four separate interviews, I spoke to every member of Parquet Courts about what Wide Awake’s themes mean to them, the emphasis on funk, and what working with a producer for the first time contributed to the record.