"About a year ago, we played the Triple Rock to basically just my parents."

So remembered Jordan Gatesmith, 19, whose mom and dad were back at the Triple Rock on Saturday along with as many other people as can be crammed into the club. It took a while, but Gatesmith's band Howler finally sold out the release party for its debut album. Whether it was the second British magazine cover story or having the 89.3 Current record of the week that finally put them over the edge, the young lads can no longer be called relative unknowns in their hometown.

The sell-out crowd varied between music fans Gatesmith's age and older musicheads closer to his parents' age – those for whom Howler's new label, Rough Trade, probably means the most. Especially among the latter group, there was a decipherable air of show-me-what-you-got.

The band didn't exactly leave everything on stage, but it played a fast, playful yet focused set that clocked in at a dozen songs in 40 minutes and was noticeably sharper than the set I saw by them in the Entry over the summer (in front of about 30 people). Weirdly, though, Saturday's set list only included about half of "America Give Up," the record the band was there to promote, book-ended by the cool, catchy strummer "America" for an opener and the Iggy-prickly punk blast "Black Lagoon" as the finale. They filled in the gaps with a few songs off their pre-Rough Trade EP, including its title track "This One's Different" and "For All Concern." The track that made both the EP and LP, "I Told You Once," came three-quarters of the way in alongside the new single "Back of Your Neck," and both sounded spot-on and spunky enough where I could imagine a room full of young English fans bursting at the seams during them. The Triple Rock crowd seemed modestly impressed, too.

Alas, one of the best songs from the new album wasn't included, "Pythagorean Fearem." Gatesmith threatened to attempt a Zeppelin tune instead, which at least would have helped beef up the set. Are things happening so fast for Howler that the members have yet to learn how to pull off all the songs from their album? Let's give them the benefit of doubt and assume that the boys just did not want their parents out too late after midnight.