Peter Wolf Crier
The Active Dance Of Anxious Folk
Apr 22, 2010
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Brett Allen at Mr. & Mrs. T and Rachael Ray's Feedback Festival
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Hard As Nails
original version appears on Inter-Be
The least veiled and most vulnerable of the lot: "Hard as Nails" presents itself as a narrative for coming to those same feelings internally, in earnest, with innocence. Assuming your moment, owning whatever pride your pockets could hold in your days as a child, it sometimes takes a girl from the public school to pull the curtain on your adolescence and uncover what man awaits in the shadows of all our best laid boyhood fantasies come true.
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Crutch & Cane
original version appears on Inter-Be
The first song off Inter-Be. The first song written for the album, without that intent. Crutch and Cane came from a place naively verbal and the least bit self-aware. The song's charm serves as a reminder that the words which can scare us most, often stow themselves away in spoons of sugar.
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For Now
original version appears on Inter-Be
Suffering, for all our aversion to it, is able to nail us to the present moment with immutable immediacy. This can be observed over cigarettes. This can be demonstrated in song if your limit your phrasing. Pema Chodron has written it better.
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Untitled 101
original version appears on Inter-Be
Brian and I, before ever playing a bar or host to Matthew Maconahay, played 16 shows in 3 weeks at a house we rented on short lease. There was a lot shit bouncing around those rooms, in my mind, throughout that time in my life. The songs were worn down, eroded. Then, just as I did with what little voice remained in tact at SXSW, I found things buried inside them. 8 shows deep in Austin, there was a new beauty slowly drawing its exposure in "101". No part of my experiences in these past months has accompanied such reassurance that these, in this moment's truth, are the songs I should be singing.
It was a situation of all being in this together, this particular Saturday morning, in the middle of last month. Peter Pisano and Brian Moen of the Minneapolis band Peter Wolf Crier had arrived early for a 10:30 a.m. opening slot for the Mr. & Mrs. T and Rachael Ray Feedback Festival that we were asked to help curate and be a part of and the rains were still fucking up the whole morning. Dirty water was gushing along the curbs and sidewalks, washing away the free beer-induced puke from SXSW patrons of the night before. Everyone was watching where they stepped and the mug of coffee that Pisano was nursing and protective of was important for sanity. The margaritas and Bloody Marys, oddly enough were already being mixed at the bar next to the restaurant portion of Stubbs BBQ, where we were setting up our "stage" for the day. We all walked into the room together, all confused together, looking at the piles of heavy wooden tables and chairs that didn't belong. A little while later, Rachael Ray strolled through the restaurant to a side room, where she filmed a short segment for her television program, while sitting at a round table filled with three or four piping hot Mexican dishes that she'd prepared for party-goers that afternoon. She didn't stick around much longer than that and we took over from that point - the skeleton crew of Daytrotter grunts, along with the talent (Pisano and Moen, along with the band's manager, Paul Gillis) - clearing out the room so that we could tape our first-ever Daytrotter sessions before an exclusive live audience. We fell an hour and a half behind schedule - victims to missing rental gear and various other ailments that left us without a working PA system (improvised using spare guitar amps) and improper power cords and strips. We made due and when Peter Wolf Crier finally started knocking out "Hard As Nails," the second song from its upcoming debut album, "Inter-Be," one would have not known the travails of three hours earlier and all was right.
Pisano and Moen, as a duo, are powerful and direct. They play off of each other without eye contact - with Pisano singing himself red and veiny and Moen unleashing imaginative and dynamic percussion - creating a less experimental and quirky, but equally as thrilling sound as do Meric Long and Logan Kroeber of Dodos. It's a sound that pulsates with anxiety and immediacy and everything that throws Pisano into the sort of state that turns him red and sweating - as if you can almost see him swiveling and shifting, rocking and bucking, stomping his feet to the ground as he doesn't even attempt to sit still as he plays. You can hear it. It's an active sounding bit of folk rock and roll that has more spirit than it knows that to do with. "Crutch & Cane," is as strong of a song as you'll hear all year, thumping and chirping with lively vigor and touch. It's everything that makes you get up and dance. It's everything that instinctively throws a smile onto your face and you move. You move along with Pisano and Moen and you ask for it to last and last and last.
Peter Wolf Crier Official Site
Jagjaguwar Records
