By Saul Myhre, Alliance Intern from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities ’21
In their 2018 song Before the Water gets too High, Parquet Courts wonderfully conceptualizes the feeling that our environment harbors a time bomb that cannot be defused “by the profits that you make.” They’re challenging state media and mega-corporations who “know time can’t be bought.” Indie band Parquet Courts is not subtle about critiquing society for missing early signs of climate change: “What’s it worth all the money we made, Floating idly in a newborn lake, Far above financial centers, Cities sink like market rates.”
Parquet Courts is more cynical than other artists, not sugarcoating their message behind a jovial backtrack and subtle lyrics. They instead opt for a melancholy instrumental and blunt wording. Activists are not safe from criticism as the band hums, “What becomes of our demonstrations,” when the clock strikes midnight? Parquet Courts wonders if all the bribes and profits will be worth it when the glass of our planet finally cracks “Or is it someone else’s job, Until the rich are refugees?”
Before the Water gets too High
Seldom have I ever questioned the end
Still I grow frost when I’m reminded
Euphemisms on a loop interchange
Which hands get to turn the final page?
In whose throat belongs the swan song
Crisis, warming, denial, change?
State TV helps the public explain
Broadcast beamed into the dry terrain
Images of drenched survival
Without hope but soaked with pain
Consequences of reality felt
All conditions of humanity built
On the bridges
Tent villages waiting for the state to help
Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
If the clock strikes midnight then
What becomes of our demonstrations?
To which fate have these gatherings fell?
Which halls echo all the chants we yelled
Into faces on the coins we tossed into the wishing well?
Drinking water on which we subsist
Mixing into rivers that did not exist yesterday
When all the warning signs were there but sorely missed
What’s it worth all the money we made
Floating idly in a newborn lake?
Far above financial centers
Cities sink like market rates
Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back
Before the water gets too high
Add up the bribes you take
And know time can’t be bought
By the profits that you make
Before the water gets too high
To float the powers that be
Or is it someone else’s job
Until the rich are refugees?
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high