“Setting It Off”
from the album Garden of Arms
2011
iTunes
Peter Wolf Crier’s rustic debut drew comparisons to For Emma, Forever Ago, partly for the Eau Claire ties, partly for some slight aesthetic similarities, and partly because the back-story (“born on a single summer night” by an inspired Peter Pisano) struck the same romantic nerve as the whole cabin-in-the-woods thing. To parallelize further, Garden of Arms, like, Bon Iver, carves new crannies in which to play with expectations, with the Minneapolis duo confidently dressing folk-pop bones in added finery.
“Right Away” is enlivened by errant percussion; “Krishnamutri” features an Eastern influence (but thankfully wears it lightly); the ornamental rhythms underpinning “Hard Heart” recall pre-mash-up era Soulwax; while back-tracking tapes on both opener “Right Away” and the closing “Wheel” suggest someones’ been giving their Radiohead albums a re-spin. Yet they’re not above a bit of undiluted sentiment: “Never Meant to Love You,” for instance, is nicely old-fashioned; straightforwardly staged, and all the better for it.