(2019) The Intelligence - Un-Psychedelic in Peavey City


Review:
Ten albums. Twenty years. The hard boxy rants of Lars Finberg’s Intelligence have lasted long enough to turn into something of an institution. Here, a generation into their run, these NW provocateurs refine a ribald variety of proto-punk minimalism that seems to only become wirier and more agile as it ages. Finberg has stopped drinking since the giddier, jokier Vintage Future, an album which we lauded for mining “a consistent vein of who-gives-a-fuck proto-punk that sneers at the world over scraped pick bass and boxy mechanized beats.” Now dry, though not sober in all senses of the term, he plays devil’s advocate with 12 step platitudes, observing, “Of course, I want to be present, but not that present,” in the very first words of “L’Appel Du Vide.” The song touches on the existential havoc that drinking heavily — and then stopping — can wreak. “I’ve been dry for nine months,” Finberg deadpans. “I’ve been bored for nine months.” The blood alcohol content of The Intelligence may have dropped, but otherwise, things are reassuringly the same. The band, as before, includes Finberg and Dave Hernandez on guitars, Drew Church on bass and drummer Kanaan Tupper. The sound, too, remains simultaneously arch and aggressive, with stark geometrical rhythms delineated in slashes and bangs, and lacerating lyrics barked in staccato bursts. “Auteur Detour” stutters and rolls asymmetrically, the bass riff terse and rupturing, the guitar refrain, when it comes, nearly lush with pillowy sustain. Finberg, likewise, alternates between bitten off verses and long howling final notes. These songs keep you on pins and needles. There’s a sly humor, here, too, not just in the sardonic lyrics, but in the musical references. “Lower Rider” borrowers the bass swank and rattling percussion from the War chestnut, while putting up a scrim of post-modern irony. “No Credit/No Problem” satirizes a whole slew of inanities, consumer debt to artistic emptiness, against a sly, slinky vamp of drum and bass. All the songs are scraped to their minimal essence, tightened to a vibrating pitch and delivered without fuss or drama. The culture puts a premium on novelty and experiment, but here’s another worthy goal: take what you do and get to the bone of it by working at it year after year, album after album.


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Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: post-punk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits