Peter Wolf Crier             
Garden of Arms
Jagjaguwar
Street: 09.06
Peter Wolf Crier = The War of 1812 Lite
The Minneapolis-based duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen like to serve up their indie music with distortion. And while, by itself, simply making noise certainly shouldn’t be a reason to call something a song, both men possess an understated talent for songwriting. While at times, Pisano’s grating falsetto threatens to overtake some of the material, overall, he does have a pleasant voice. Opener “Right Away” is representative of his vocal style, part Kermit the Frog and part Robert Smith. “Beach” is a bit more buoyant than its predecessor, but the funeral-like organ of “Having It Out” is just plain awful. Much better both musically and vocally is “Krishnamurti,” and even if I can’t decipher Pisano’s lyrics on it, “Settling It Off” is actually excellent. With Garageband, it doesn’t necessarily take a full band to make a full band sound anymore, but credit to Moen for helping to flesh out the songs so they sound like they could be performed by a whole band. The duo excels at peppier tracks—like “Hard Heart” and “Loud Enough To Know”—but the cloying vocals and instrumentation of “Never Meant To Love You” and especially “Wheel” really drag things down, and maybe now that they are over their sophomore slump, their next material won’t be so predictably boring as the majority of this album—droning, miserable-sounding filler tracks. (Kilby Court: 10.28) –Dean O Hillis

Riverboat Gamblers
Smash/Grab
Paper + Plastick
Street: 07.12
Riverboat Gamblers = (Valient Thorr + Street Brats + The Strokes + One Man Army + (Dropkick Murphys - Celtic/Irish)) x (Ramones + Dead Boys)
Riverboat Gamblers are slapping us with a four-song EP that hearkens back to the more rock n’ roll material found in their earlier releases … somewhat confusingly. “Parasite Friends” fleshes out the cathartic dynamics and sense of a “good song” that we’ve come to expect from Riverboat Gamblers (more like Underneath the Owl), which nonetheless impels us to bounce around in a fresh, bare-boned way. I appreciate that in closer “Anything But You,” the Gamblers pound out a D-beatdown, but singer Mike Wiebe doesn’t deliver the necessary aggression for a hardcore song, and the vocal track seems washed out, rendering the track unmemorable. “The Ol’ Smash And Grab” and “Maggie Lea” walk along rockin’ riff-lines, but keep it fairly minimalist without the customary bridge switch-offs RBG usually play, which lends the release an almost garage-esque character. This EP settles nicely after a couple listens, but I wouldn’t recommend it for RBG beginners. –Alexander Ortega

Russian Circles
Empros
Sargent House
Street: 10.25
Russian Circles = Pelican + Red Sparowes + And So I Watch You From Afar
I hold any band that features a former member of Botch to a very high standard—Russian Circles meet that standard and then some. This instrumental trio sets themselves apart from the crescendo-chasing lemmings with a style of post-rock that focuses more on driving energy than empty space. Opening track “309” manages to be vicious, but not in an overtly aggressive way: Dave Turncrantz hits those drums fucking hard, and Brian Cook’s bass tone at the end of the song is just plain ugly. “Mladek” opens with a guitar riff from Mike Sullivan that initially seems pretty enough to fit on an Explosions in the Sky album, but when Turncrantz and Cook jump in, the song becomes a certified ass-kicker. The first four minutes of “Schipol” offers a bit of a respite, but there’s still some gnarly stuff going on underneath the delicate guitarwork. “Praise Be Man” closes the album out in a spectacularly fuzzy manner and the use of vocals (a rarity in Russian Circles’ music) is a pleasant surprise. This may be the best Russian Circles album yet, and that’s really saying something. –Ricky Vigil

Skinny Puppy
HanDover
SPV
Street: 10.25
HanDover = Bites/Remission + Last Rights + Mythmaker
Just when you think you know exactly what to expect from Skinny Puppy, they throw you a curveball. And not just one that hangs for a few feet and drops—you completely miss it, and it blows through the backstop. HanDover, the Pups’ latest release, is a sonic pit bull that refuses to allow itself to be chained to a tree in your backyard. Sure, there are a couple of “danceable” tracks on the album (“Cullorblind,” “Village”), but by-and-large, this is a challenging listen, and the reward will differ radically depending upon perspective. This is the sound of a band that is attempting to further itself rather than reinvent itself, and, unlike most past Puppy offerings, there isn’t one single jolting moment during the album where the listener will finally “get it.” The entire album is, in effect, that moment. This is the noisiest record Skinny Puppy has released since 1992’s Last Rights, but it doesn’t have the same claustrophobic effect. Instead, it leaves much more room to breathe, but don’t turn your back on it—it will still grab you by the throat and cut off said breath without warning. –Gavin Hoffman