Indie rock band Parquet Courts underlines the importance of speaking out

Parquet Courts comprises (from left) Yeaton, Brown, Max Savage and Andrew Savage. — Tribune News Service

Parquet Courts' Andrew Savage knows the risks of writing songs with political themes. But that didn’t deter him as he dove into sessions for what would become one of the year’s best albums, Wide Awake!.

The opening song, Total Football, alludes to a style of European soccer that foregrounds the value of teamwork over individual stars. It’s also something of a blue-collar manifesto that fires verbal volleys over a furious bass line, right up until the punch-line, an explicit diss of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.