It’s the end of the summer. The moon is uncomfortably warm, the air is stale and still, and it’s so thick you could cut right through it. The late August nights bleed together with machine-like efficiency, and in the atonal drone of the remaining cicadas’ final chirps, an intangible feeling of intense dread swarms all daring enough to step out into this unforgiving night. The drive home is white-knuckled. The hypnotic glare of oncoming traffic engulfs the reddened retinas of the late-night travelers. The machine whirs. It feels as though everything might come crashing in at any given moment. 

PORTRAiTS, the debut full-length from Kentucky-based art-rockers PARKiNG, captures this unforgiving sense of dread, unease, and mania with haunting accuracy. Its sprawling and oftentimes politically charged sound is a perfect fit for the ledge, for the cusp of collapse, and for the dreadful isolation of twenty-first-century America. Spanning ten tracks and clocking in at nearly forty-five minutes, ‘PORTRAiTS’ features pulsating post-punk explosions, haunting orchestral abstractions, and fresh takes on the last half century of art and noise rock. 

‘Siren’ starts the record with Frankie T. Moore and Lizzie Cooper’s hypnotic, driving rhythm section. They’re accompanied shortly thereafter by Boss Benson’s guitar, which dances in the nostalgia of late 70s UK post-punk. Moore exhales over the sprinting track as he shouts one of the album’s defining decrees, “Feed into the sirens/Everyone knows the silence.” As the song chugs, it grows more manic, more disjointed. Benson’s guitar growls and shrieks in feedback, Moore’s wails grow more pressing, and Cooper’s bass never relents. The song crescendos into a swirling wall of sound around Moore’s non-lexical vocables. 

Immediately following is ‘Thirds,’ a quasi-sung-spoken art-rock track that features the first of Moore’s manic, drowned-out narrators. Moore rambles his dissatisfactions and disillusions over Cooper’s stabs and Benson’s beautifully shambolic guitar. The monologue wanders and backtracks through conversations about the plausibility of a higher power, distressed linens piling up, poor reading material, and frustrations with socially constructed hierarchies. Its verses read like a dejected manifesto on disillusionment with the general state of well—just about everything. The singular glimmer of hope amidst the disillusionment is shouted in the chorus; Moore empathizes with our collective frustrations and isolation as he shouts, “It’s not your fault you’re out of place.” 

These frustrations are further explored in ‘Lantern’ and ‘Mike Johnson is a Mechanic,’ two of the album’s most politically driven songs. ‘Lantern’ drives and bounces like a lost Joy Division track. Moore’s frantic drums are reminiscent of Stephen Morris, and Benson’s jagged guitar reads like an amped-up Bernard Sumner riff. ‘Mike Johnson is a Mechanic’ is one of two songs with leading vocals by Cooper (the other being ‘Statements’). Her blasé delivery paired with the

dancey instrumentation creates the record’s catchiest song and one of its best. She encapsulates the recurring thesis of frustration, taking political aim at our inherited issues and apathetic leaders, saying, ‘Once more/I’ve grown so tired.’ Moore maniacally shouts beneath her, and Benson shreds the record’s catchiest riff. 

‘DSGN’ and ‘Observation’ are two more extremely well-crafted songs. The band proves that not only does it have something to say, but it can also produce extremely catchy and well-engineered tracks. ‘People Running Madly to Some Kind of Monolith’ is the first of two orchestral tracks. The ghastly whines of Moore’s violin, cello, and bass haunt the three-minute runtime until it dies out into swirling static and feedback. The white noise bleeds crimson into ‘Monolith,’ a seven-minute post-rock exploration of mania, dread, and delusion. This is the record’s defining piece. 

Chains rattle, Cooper’s bass stalks, Benson’s bowed guitar screeches, and Moore begins his sleep-deprived, haunted narration. Moore begins speaking of his premonitions, ones so vile and so filled with dread and hatred that he “can’t bear to watch.” Benson’s guitar moans in eerie notes, and Moore pounds his drums as his narrator grows evermore paranoid: “The lies brought to attention by no one of importance. Lies that I have brought to my own attention.” He stands beneath a nauseating night facing an unknown crowd, putting us face-to-face with one of his delusions, “The wind is dark/Their eyes all glistening in the rather unpleasant but warm moonlight.” He reads this exhausted and indifferently as if trying to justify and cling to his remaining sanity. 

Moore’s mania grows, and the instrumentation follows; it feels as if everything might collapse in on itself. With one final attempt to retain his sanity, he shouts the thesis for the album’s mania, “I fear/I fear what I fear might not be real.” It’s not enough clarity, and the hysteric instrumentation—the mania—overtakes Moore. Benson’s guitar screams as he bludgeons it, the drums frantically sprint in every direction, and Cooper’s bass and backing vocals loom over the volatility like the “dark wind.” Moore shouts nondescriptly, but he’s silenced by his own mania. 

It plays like the score to a lost Edgar Allen Poe text. Perhaps much of the record does. ‘PORTRAiTS’ deals in mania, but the issues its narrators face are very real and very pressing. In a culture and country where isolation and extremism have spread like a common virus, ‘PARKiNG’ offers a complex take on 21st-century America that is uncompromising and blunt in its horrors yet hopeful in its anthemic refrains. Maybe amidst all this dread and unease there is comfort; maybe that comfort is simply that it isn’t all our own faults. ‘PORTRAiTS’ is the announcement of a band that can craft intelligent, ornate, and catchy songs. Their voice is distinct, urgent, and sincere. 

PORTRAITS is now available anywhere you find your music. Tapes are available on the band’s Bandcamp.

Written by Jack Massucci