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O’Neil is the Good North’s primary lyricist. On Life, he says, he took inspiration from writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov and tried to stay away from the old romantic tropes. "It gets old when you just write about the girl who left you and you’re sad, y’know?" But the quintet’s music is a collaborative process — one that depends on trial and error. "We’ll write some songs, then keep them around for one or two shows, then decide to get rid of them," Crowley says. "If it doesn’t stick out in our heads after like a month, we’re not afraid to say, ‘Well, let’s write something better.’ "

As an example, O’Neil cites "The Art of Translation," a hurtling ride buffeted with dissonant squalls and percussive blasts of guitar (and a really cool synthesized effect about two minutes in). Working into frenzy, but still tightly coiled, it’s one of the EP’s best and most brutal songs. But, he says, "we wrote it last summer, played it a few times, and weren’t feeling it. So we put it on the back burner, brought it back a few months ago, and were like, ‘Wow, this is a good song.’ "

Another sign that the new EP represents the Good North’s best work to date: O’Neil’s declaration that "I don’t think we’ve gotten sick of playing any of these songs. On our last album, we got sick of a lot of ’em pretty quick," He pauses. "But if I’m still playing ‘Not Feeling It’ when I’m 45 years old, I’m not gonna be feeling it."

"If we’re lucky enough to be playing when we’re 45, I’ll be pretty happy," Crowley laughs.

For now, the Good North will continue to just do what they do. "I’d have nothing else to talk about if I didn’t have a band," says O’Neil. "We’d drink as much even if we didn’t have a band, so we might as well be making something productive out of it."

THE BAND WHO’LL OPEN the Good North’s release party, their friends the Information, also have a fine EP under their belts, and their long-awaited full-length is due out on Primary Voltage in the fall.

"We’ll be sitting there drinking in the front row [during the Information’s set]," says O’Neil. "We both like each other’s bands, and we’re all good friends, too. We’ve never really jelled as well with another group."

Sitting at the Model Café in Allston, Information singer Max Fresen and guitarist Deb Grant allow that the two bands’ first interactions didn’t seem so propitious. "We’d seen each other from ‘around,’ " says Fresen, "and I think we both thought that we all hated each other. There was something weird. But then we got drunk together one night and realized that we didn’t actually have a reason to not like each other!"

The songs on the Information’s self-released I Love Trouble EP grew from "swelly," "atmospheric" embryonic demo tapes Fresen had recorded on some fancy home equipment he’d procured with riches from the dot-com boom. When the band took shape in 2002 — Fresen, Grant, guitarist Zack Wells, bassist Heath Fradkoff, drummer Brad Kayal, and keyboardist Jenn Westervelt (who was replaced shortly after the EP was recorded by Ashley Moody, late of the cult "robot" band Servotron) — the disparate arrivals to Boston from far-flung locales like Florida, Virginia, and Alabama crystallized quickly and easily, and they brought Fresen’s nascent notions to life. "I was so psyched at that first practice to hear those songs played, like, correctly," he says. "Like, without my bad guitar. To hear other people play it well, and held-down, and the drums tight, and to have it be loud."

The songs reveal a sextet whose members have marked synergy and a flair for the dramatic. "Attention" is huge, all booming bass, swirling keyboards, and thunderous punk chords, evoking a dark feeling of mechanical meltdown and dystopian decay. "New Deal," with synths that seem to bubble up from unseen depths, finds Fresen’s voice affecting a sort of automaton air. The vaguely sinister slither of "I Lose Control" builds, releases, then builds some more, with furious peals of melodic noise flying in all directions. The title track, throbbing with aggressive guitars echoing and synths floating across an icy chasm, is an object lesson in evocative atmospherics.

Call it nü-new-wave, maybe. "We try to keep our stuff dancy," says Fresen, "but I always get this impression that people are comparing us to New Order or something. I just don’t see it. I always think of us as the Stooges with keyboards.

And he’s excited about the new full-length, which in addition to versions of the EP’s four songs will feature many new ones currently in progress. "There’s no weak points in any of the songs. We haven’t really talked about it as a band, because the recording is still a couple months away, but . . . we’ll have more than enough songs to choose from."

In the meantime, do the Information have any big plans for the summer?

"Um, there’s this thing called Lollapalooza?" says Grant. I’m chagrined. How could I have not realized they’re playing there?

"We’re thinking about going to it. The Dresden Dolls are playing."

The Good North and the Information play this Friday, June 11, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square. Tickets are $8; call 617-492-BEAR.