It’s 2am. You’re on a sticky dance floor. One hand scatters beer everywhere from your half-crumpled plastic pint glass while the other punches the air. Like every other rock’n’roll star in the club you chant and slur along to the “Whoa-oh-oh oh oh” of the chorus while stepping on the foot of the girl behind you for the seventh time. Parka have you right where they want you.
For there can be only one purpose for ‘If You Wanna’ – to get inside your head and right down to your dancing shoes. It’s all there: the simple but effective guitar riff, the universal feel-good lyrics that urge you to “Dance if you wanna, dance if you’re gonna…Just use the music, lose all your words tonight”, the aforementioned sing-along “Whoa-oh-oh oh oh”s, and, crucially, like their compatriots The Fratellis and The View, Glasgow-based Parka seem to have mastered the art of the catchy indie chorus.
A floor-filling chorus does not a good song make however, and, despite the opening feedback and yelp, ‘If You Wanna’ lacks the true swagger of its most recent sounding-boards ‘Chelsea Dagger’ and ‘Wasted Little DJs’. Ultimately it is purely and simply decent, danceable indie music with a catchy chorus. That said, I am yet to hear it where it was designed to be played… The single comes backed by a not so sly dig at London trendies, ‘Hoxton Hair’ and the acoustic shanty ‘Closing Time’. The former is a lyrically heavy handed assault on a group of people who are already very easy to make fun of and awkwardly name checks the Old Blue Last pub and Number 25 bus. It has a similarly big chorus that this time makes use of “Ba-ba-ba-ba” noises and at time does sound a little like Feeder. The latter, though, is a stupidly infectious late night sing-along number preaching the virtues of whiskey and music. Well no arguments there, Parka. Here’s to drinking, dancing and having a damn good time.
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First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
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