You’d have been forgiven for not taking them entirely seriously, back when Minto started appearing around town under the name the Smokes. The five-piece was chiefly a country-folk proposition, but a slightly ripe gothic edge and a habit of slipping into sunshine pop made it feel as if you were hearing the Gun Club one minute and Arthur Lee’s Love the next (minus the smack, madness, and death). With unkempt gang vocals that swelled with inebriated energy, the Smokes furthermore came off like a bunch of tanked-up Atlantic fishermen attempting gospel.

Their 2006 debut album, Fields and Factory Floors, was a low-budget charmer with a couple of mix-tape classics tucked inside, in the shape of “Mountain Tree”, reminiscent of Magnolia Electric Co., and a breezy samba-based concoction called “Microphone”.

What made the Smokes faintly ridiculous, if lovable, was vocalist Ryan “Wally” Hoben’s tireless determination to establish himself as one of Vancouver’s drunkest frontmen. Equally silly were some of the group’s extracurricular activities, like drummer-filmmaker Jimi Cuell’s Legion of Impact, a lunatic series of shorts about an underground fighting league.

But things have changed for the Smokes along with the name, which itself reflects a new attitude inside the group, according to Hoben and guitarist Kalvin Olafson.

“We’re a bunch of actors and writers and stuff,” Hoben tells the Straight, over coffees at JJ Bean on the Drive. “And we were just playing music for fun, to get friends together and party and hang out.”

“But we got to a certain age,” Olafson continues, “and it was like, ”˜Are we gonna be in a band or are we gonna be in a band?’ And we started practising hard-core. We improved our work ethic, and this time we ain’t fuckin’ around. Last time, we recorded with a friend, for cheap—very lo-fi. This time, it was balls-out.”

Hoben and Olafson are days away from the release of their second full-length, Lay It on Me, recorded by Steve Albini in Chicago last February, under the name Minto Chipman. While working on the record, Albini mentioned that Minto Chipman sounded like a “college band that didn’t make it”, and thus it became Minto. Beyond that, the legend who recorded Nirvana’s In Utero didn’t interfere too much.

“He just hard-wired stuff,” Hoben recalls. “Like Ma Bell in the ’20s. There was no Pro Tools, just tape. And he’d cut it sometimes.”

“So fast, too. He’d be back within two minutes,” Olafson adds, after describing Albini and his coverall-sporting engineers as “farmers of tape”.

“He helps with things like amp choices,” continues the guitarist, “but they’re our songs in the end. That’s his thing.”

Hoben mentions that a few friends of the band questioned the wisdom of spending $25,000 on a recording expedition—“All of our savings, and then some,” he says—but his and Olafson’s animated recollections of the “dream trip” suggest that it was money well spent. Not to mention that Lay It on Me is a pile-driving progression from Fields and Factory Floors, on which the band’s big ideas were undermined by thin sound.

Olafson neatly characterizes the difference. “With this one, we’re a rock band. I went from playing acoustic guitar all the time to playing electric guitar all the time. I went from clean to fuzzy.”

It’s also the work of a better band with a tighter grasp on songcraft, not to mention a defiantly live-sounding effort that pushes and pulls in all the right places.

Opener “New Bones” signals the change, with Cuell and bassist Suzy Easton’s hard-hitting foundation setting everybody up for the one track remodelled from the first Smokes record, where it was titled “Bones”. Gritty pounders like “Tonight I Lay My Head” and “Bird’s Eye View” further the agenda, while “Train Bridge Blues” mirrors the airiness and charm of “Microphone”. But Minto also breaks the mould on “City Folks Dream”, with its sideways rhythm, snaky Meat Puppets guitar line, and breathily downcast vocal. Ditto for the pretty piano interlude “Tiny Terror”, and the mandolin lullaby that closes the album, “Home Away” (written in tribute to their friends in the Hotel Lobbyists).

There’s no reason the triumphant sophomore record shouldn’t aid Minto in fulfilling its not-unreasonable ambition of climbing aboard a Secretly Canadian or Dine Alone–sized label and then touring its ass off. “That’s all we want,” says Hoben—although there’s still some unsettled business, apparently.

“We need a cover,” the vocalist idly mentions, as the interview wraps up. “I’m thinking ”˜Crimson and Clover’, ” he says.

After a thoughtful beat, it seems to dawn on Hoben that his roommate, best friend, and ever-inventive lead guitarist Evret Tucker isn’t around to defend himself. “And then Evret, of course, wants to do ”˜Sister Christian’ by Night Ranger,” he snorts. “So he’s been transposing the organ solos to electric guitar. I hear him late at night, working so hard. For like, three months he’s been trying to do it. ”˜Motorin’”¦’ ”

Hoben shakes his head and sighs. “He’s passionate about his shit.”

Minto plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Friday (July 31).