Riverboat Gamblers

No one has doubted the Riverboat Gamblers‘ ability to entertain, thanks to frontman Mike Wiebe’s rafter-climbing acrobatics and frequent forays into the audience. The group’s bristling garage-pop punk races like a nitro funny car, recalling the Supersuckers’ artery-bursting pulse. Despite earning a higher profile with 2006’s To the Confusion of Our Enemies, the Texans returned from tour burnt worse than Bernie Madoff’s investors. A decade and four albums in, they questioned whether to go on. The bassist left, and Wiebe got divorced, but after a break, the Gamblers returned re-energized and recorded their catchiest album to date, Underneath the Owl. It’s rife with broken-hearted pathos and fresh new directions, from the new wave-tinged “Robots May Break Your Heart” to country ballad “The Tearjerker.” “I used to need everything to be very, very fast,” Wiebe tells us. “There’s definitely rockers on this, but there’s slower songs, too, and I’m totally cool with it.”