Parlor Walls Opposites Northern Spy Records Released: 3.17.17 The Azerrad -approved outskirts of rock n’ roll music seem a largely accessible landscape since the days of tape trading and ‘zines, that subculture of miscreants and weirdos who, for a period of decades, subsisted on fodder cultivated by DIY record labels and performers who operated a little to the left of the synthetic tastes catered to by the American spoon feed. While rock music has lost relevance to a populace auto-tuned out and engaged by karaoke television, those outskirts still thrive and produce smart, thoughtful, and provocative sounds, aided by the tools granted them by the Internet to enable limitless self-promotion. This is necessary in post-truth America, especially when the powers-that-be seem poised to strip away funding for public broadcasting and the arts. Listening to Parlor Walls ’ debut LP, Opposites , I thought about how I would’ve interpreted an album like this twenty or thirty years ago, its...
