Get ready to dance at Parquet Courts' Metro show April 20

When Parquet Courts first convulsed their way out of Brooklyn a few years back, word on the American streets was that these punky tyros were actually transplants from Texas. Here's why: A band from nowhere is more interesting than a band from somewhere - especially when the "nowhere" is a mysterious elsewhere and the "somewhere" is a neoliberal anywhere.

Only three of the quartet's members grew up in Texas, but two of them do the talking: singer-guitarists Andrew Savage and Austin Brown. And on their recent album, "Human Performance," the talk is beautiful even when it's ugly. Their North American tour brings them to Chicago's Metro on Wednesday, April 20.

That's because their big muse, New York City, has become more annoying and lethal since their arrival. On their new album, over the jangle-tumble of "Captive of the Sun," Brown takes inventory of the noise pollutants that ultimately commingle into "a drive-by lullaby that couldn't get worse." And during the jittery "Two Dead Cops," Savage worries about police brutality in a dehydrated shout: "'Protect you' is what they say, but point and shoot is what they do."

Throughout all of this, the foursome - which includes bassist Sean Yeaton and ace drummer Max Savage - chatters and drones like Sonic Youth, the Velvet Underground and Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers. But the sound is more of an inheritance than an imitation. This is a casually urgent band that's more concerned with shaking tomorrow's air than conducting another seance outside of CBGB.

And while it isn't written in 18-point font on the lyric sheet, there's still plenty of Texas to be heard on this album, namely in its excellent grasp of momentum. In Texas, rock 'n' roll is driving music. In New York, it's walking music. Fittingly, Parquet Courts work at both speeds.

Listen to the slack rumble of "Dust," the unhurried stride of "Outside," the cool gallop of "Berlin Got Blurry." These songs simultaneously feel like quick runs to the bodega and long drives down Interstate 35. And if you find yourself listening at a standstill - at a Parquet Courts show, for example - they might make you dance like a maniac.

It feels good when music pushes our bodies around like this. It also feels good to try to pin it down on a map - especially after rock 'n' roll's migration onto the Internet has all but sanded-off its regional edges. When a faraway place shapes the music that's shaping our current moment, songs become portals, allowing us to inhabit more than one space at once.

This feels more acute as rock itself becomes a sort of displaced ghost, a pre-dead style currently wandering our cultural bardo. Young listeners no longer hold rock 'n' roll in the holiest of regards, so taking it seriously has become entirely optional - for the spectators and for the people making it. So in a weird switcheroo, everyone's listenership becomes more vital. To care about new rock music in 2016 is to help protect it from oblivion.

Parquet Courts are well aware of this, and plenty of other things, too. Disheveled wisdom practically gushes from "Pathos Prairie," the penultimate cut on "Human Performance" - and for a song about how our fastest emotions only slow our greater emotional progress, the huffy-hesitant drum beat couldn't be more apt.

"We're sure that we're gonna change," Savage sings in the song's farewell line, lying to himself as he stares into the endless horizon of young adulthood, feeling for the edge. Squint with him and you'll forget about Texas and Brooklyn for a second, too. That infinite plateau is where this band is living right now, and it's where this album will live forever.