"When I first heard Brothers Quetico, their defining characteristic was a squalling earthiness that mixed roots music with sheer noise. On their second full-length, Folk Art Is the New Regular Art, the Minneapolis-based band (composed of actual brothers Brennan (vocals, bass), Hunter (vocals, guitar), and Evan Goetzman (guitar), and non-brother Casey Dentinger (drums)) still has that quality, but it's been refracted and blended into an overarching aesthetic that's at once both weirder and more melodic.

"The album opens with "Hang," a song that establishes a thrumming insistent rhythm with a pounding four-on-the-floor beat and washed-out but driving guitars for the harmony vocals to ride out over in long arcs. It's a track that effectively connects up Low's earlier, sparer work with certain elements of punk and dreampop. Throughout the record, the vocals hover on the edge of breaking apart, occasionally exploding into a throat-rending howl, recalling Brakes' Eamon Hamilton at his most volatile.

"It's also fascinating texturally, although the noisier stuff such as "Treat for Shock" lacks cohesion and melodic interest. Their truly raucous material suffers somewhat from being confined to a record—imagining any of the heavier moments exploding with full force in a small club shows how much the band would benefit from a sympathetic producer. Still, their willingness to include three false starts on "Dr. Europe" displays an admirable ballsiness with regards to putting records together. And when Brothers Quetico get a hold of a great tune, as on closer "Above It Or In It," the music becomes as resonant as it is gritty. The drums thud lazily behind a plodding guitar two-step, and the refrain ("I was gonna shoot you in the face") sounds as dolefully regretful as it does half-assedly menacing.

"Folk Art Is the New Regular Art represents a promising step forward for the band. Now if they can get their recordings to truly capture their knife-edge balance between unchecked chaos and canny melodies, they're liable to crush the world."

Written by Steve McPherson - http://www.reveillemag.com/content/view/440/56/ Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.