Jerk With a Bomb

This Vancouver guitar-drums duo — who are nowhere near the aggro menace their name sets them up to be — don’t give themselves enough credit when they write in the liner-notes, “Songs property of those we stole them from.” Granted, their sound falls somewhere between the bare-minimalism of the Inbreds and the jagged punk-pop of Archers of Loaf — the vocals in particular are a dead ringer for Eric Bachmann. But there’s plenty of inventiveness afoot whether they’re tackling straight-up post-punk (“New Wave is Dead”), angular and heavy, moody jazz (“I Believe in Mutilation”), a straight-up ballad (“This Broken Heart”) or several snortin’ grungy two-steps, the kind they used to call cow-punk. Back when it might have been possible to define campus radio rock, this would have been Exhibit A. This is an extremely promising and surprisingly varied debut.