Scanners’ 2006 debut album, Violence Is Golden, showed that they were capable of pulling off almost any style they chose: spiky pop, swooning ballads, witchy folk. Four years later, Submarine streamlines their sound into dark post-punk with a slight folk tinge, as its first three songs show. “Jesus Saves” and “Salvation” meld chiming guitars with surprisingly lavish backing vocals, while “We Never Close Our Eyes” — which sounds a little like PJ Harvey meets Metric — is a tug of war between introspection and urgency that feels like the slicker sister of Violence Is Golden’s excellent single “Low Life.” Much of the album alternates between darkly breezy tracks like “Sick Love” and “Sleepwalking Life” and moody, slow-mo ballads like “Strangelovehate.” While Scanners do these sounds ably, Submarine buries the mischievous rock that provided some of Violence Is Golden’s highlights (although “Half a Mind” does crank up the volume a few notches). Like that album, however, Submarine boasts a sharp pop streak that surfaces on the gorgeous “Baby Blue” and “A Girl Like You” and “Goodbye”’s barbed-wire hooks. – Heather Phares