Peter Wolf Crier: Ready for its close-up

The way Peter Pisano looks back on it, the album was made completely on a whim and a prayer.

There were no set arrangements for the songs. There was no way of knowing if the loops and other tricks they used to sound like more than a duo could be pulled off onstage. There wasn't even a studio. Instead, he and drummer Brian Moen recorded it all at Moen's house, using "whatever just happened to be around us at the time."

"The only reason there wound up being piano on the album was because Brian went out and bought one a week before we recorded," Pisano recalled of making "Inter-Be," his duo Peter Wolf Crier's debut album. "It was all unplanned like that."

The most unforeseeable chapter in the story of the life of "Inter-Be" is what happened in the seven months since Pisano and Moen put it out themselves. It earned the barely year-old duo a record deal with an internationally prominent indie label, Jagjaguwar, which re-released the record Tuesday. It also landed them write-ups on some of the hippest indie blogs (BrooklynVegan and Daytrotter) and a summer tour with an acclaimed indie band (Heartless Bastards).

Which brings us to this week. Pisano is still working as a science and photography teacher at St. Francis-St. James United School in St. Paul (that's a lot of saints). His school duties mean he and Moen can't hit the road to promote it until school ends in early June. They're warming up with a hometown CD party Friday at the Turf Club.

Pisano literally doesn't know if he will return to work in the fall, a fact that bothers him.

"Being a teacher is not the kind of job you can easily pick up and leave," he said. "It's one of those things that's completely out of my control now. It all depends on what the reception for this record is like."

If I were Pisano's boss, I would start looking for a new science teacher. "Inter-Be" stands up to the attention it instantaneously earned upon its release, buoyed by comparisons to M. Ward, Robyn Hitchcock and other classic-style folk-rock tunesmiths while also standing out as its own kind of rustic, experimental beast.

All the more impressive, Pisano and Moen have drummed up an even more alluring and subtly powerful live show. They proved as much at First Ave's Best New Bands showcase in January, which was only their third public gig. They passed another good test in March with an incandescent South by Southwest showcase at Austin's famed punk club Emo's.

This certainly isn't the first time a Twin Cities band has made a record at home and quickly wound up with a buzz far from home. In fact, this seems to be the norm these days (see: Solid Gold, Tapes 'N Tapes and even Owl City).

Talking to Pisano about the album's unassuming genesis, though, it became clear that he and Moen really did not have their eyes on indie-rock stardom. A 26-year-old native of the Chicago suburbs -- he followed his old band the Wars of 1812 to town from Milwaukee -- Pisano was off from work and in quite an emotional rough patch when he crafted "Inter-Be" last summer, which is how many good debuts got their start (including Bon Iver's album for Jagjaguwar).

"I really didn't think anybody was going to hear it besides friends," Pisano said. As for the baggage unloaded on the album, he said it "was so personal, I probably couldn't have done it if I had known [the record] was going to wind up being heard by a lot more people."

Just as his vocals are laced with a nervous, high-strung energy, Pisano talks about Peter Wolf Crier's quick rise and future prospects with a rapid, uneasy tinge in his voice.

"Every time I think I can make sense of all this and think I know what's going on, the rug gets pulled out and something else crazy happens," he said.

"The one thing I take solace in is the fact that we made the record our way, all on our own. Everything else that happens now isn't really up to us, but at least the making of the record was."

White Iron + red necks While those rowdy, Ely-bred hippies in White Iron Band have turned more country with each album to great effect, it doesn't appear they're actually hoping for a career in the country music realm. Their fourth album, "3rd Rate Country Stars," opens with "Nashville Horror," a meaner update of "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" that attacks Music City's whoring ways (get it?). Waylon Jennings' bad-is-good influence is all over the disc, plus there's an amusing ode to Waylon's pal in "Willie Nelson You Ruined My Wife."

The album's shotgun spray of rednecky lyricism edges on cliché (especially from Minnesota boys), but these guys sell the material and then some with their boogie-woogie-fied rhythmic swagger and frontman Matt Pudas' gruff but oddly eloquent voice. Friday's CD party at the Cabooze is a great three-fer with Pert Near Sandstone and A Night in the Box (9 p.m., $8).

Blue Felix ties the Knot Not since American Head Charge has a Twin Cities metal band made a bigger splash musically while making a spectacle of themselves visually: Blue Felix, a sextet that opened Marilyn Manson's State Theatre show last year, now counts Slipknot's Sid Wilson (DJ Starscream) as its manager and the co-producer of its new CD, "Sample of a Solution." The members' hokey attire -- think: GWAR in a junior-high haunted-house -- belies their seriously powerful sound, with the guttural growl of the Knot, classic two-guitar thrash and a little of Tool's hazy roar. Release party is Saturday at the Cabooze with Nuisance (9 p.m., $10.).

Random mix Money: That's what the volunteers behind "The Minnesota Beatle Project, Vol. 1" wanted, and that's what they got. Local music org Vega Productions just handed over $25,000 to the Minnesota Music Educators Association for school programs around the state, and that's just off of sales since December. The disc is still available at VegaProductions.org or your local indie shop. ...

Jug-band folkie Gabe Barnett feels our economic pain: Not only is his second album, "Don't [Expletive] With the Money-Changers," all about the woes of capitalism, but he's giving the record away for free and not charging a cover at his release party Tuesday at Bedlam Theater (9 p.m., 1501 S. 6th St., Mpls.) ... Chooglin', Ouija Radio, Strangelights and Pink Mink head up a benefit Saturday at the 501 Club for scenester Laura Turek, whose bills piled up from a hip replacement (9 p.m., any donation). ...

Jezebel Jones & Her Wicked Ways singer Trista Meehan, who was in the news in February when her house blew up from faulty gas lines, is "giving away" the fundraiser that friends wanted to throw for her. Instead, her band, plus Robert Wilkinson's Snaps, Courtney Yasmineh and John Swardson, will perform Thursday at Sauce for victims of the McMahon's Pub fire (9:30 p.m., $5). And I thought last week's floating Art-a-Whirl gigs on the Mississippi River were the coolest thing I'd seen in this scene this spring.

chrisr@startribune.com • 612-673-4658