The Deaf

The Deaf CD Release

Turf Club

Thank the lord that the music industry's long winter of discontent (aka Thanksgiving through New Year's, a time during which almost no CDs come out) is at an end, and we can once again welcome with open arms new releases, both local and national. I've been having a hard time getting my head out of 2006: The introspection and evaluation that come along with making year-end lists led me back into listening to old favorites like Hendrix and T. Rex, but This Bunny Bites, the new album by The Deaf, might be just the thing to put an end to my thus far breach-born experience of 2007. Leadoff track, "Into the Fire," rumbles out of the gates on Jack Kalyuzhny's single-stroke tom rolls and the storm of bass and guitar whipped up by Steph and David Safar, but the magic happens when it all congeals around the yawning gap that makes room for Safar's exclamatory (and Blur-esque) "Whoo!" It's all the chorus the tune needs. "Chim Cham" is either a reference to a dance step or a "Mr. Show" sketch, and either way, it sets the pattern for songs that were probably named before they had lyrics, sounding more like good, hair-trigger concepts than the result of careful consideration—"Let's Go," "Fuck That Shit," "Shiv" and "Get 'Er Done" being prime examples. In all fairness, this isn't music about subtlety and nuance; it's about rawness and blunt objects. End to end, it's the kind of slightly sludgy post-punk that slots itself in tightly behind locals like The Soviettes and that band's offshoot, Awesome Snakes, and national acts like Queens of the Stone Age. Plus, they got a mention in the 2006 edition of the Best American Non-Required Reading as having one of the Best New American Band Names. Take that, America. With The Blind Shake, Maps of Norway and His Mischief. 9 p.m. $5. 21+. Corner of University and Snelling Aves., St. Paul. 651-647-0486. STEVE McPHERSON