The Intelligence was ready to take on any Denverites foolish enough to stand in its path. Photo from MySpace.
After three months of tour, after the endless rows of corn out the window, after the persona non grata stink of beer and bodily fetor in your duffel bag, after the daily intimacy of your bandmates’ emissions — the snot, the weak jokes, the wake of a bad buffet — you’d want to really stick it to a small crowd, too.
As fortune would have it, was interested only in the most jovial of retributions. The group played a lurking, zig-zagging surf opera to the anemic clump of patrons last Tuesday, coaxing would-be wastoids from their cocktails and couples from their intermittent nattering.
Drummer Beren Ekine-Huett employed a hefty hunk of masonry to keep her kick drum from hopping away; maestro Lars Finberg and Susanna Welbourne used walkers (sans tennis balls, alas) to keep their keyboards aloft. Despite the jerry-rigging there erupted a fearless din bristling with chip-toothed guitar and the punchy clatter of the gold-glitter drumkit.
Dapperer-than-thou in his grey-blue jacket, Finberg and his yo-yoing bark jostled through older fare like “Nice Tries” and “Dating Cops” as well as a few fresher vittles from 2009’s “Fake Surfers.” Although it took a few numbers, the reluctant rumps of the audience began to wiggle coquettishly in time to the purplish bleats of the Casio. The booths and barstools lining the room slowly emptied, laying bare a constellation of dead soldiers and sweating highballs. The band, it seemed, was winning, and they beamed at each other as widely as they could manage.
By the time the tickled trio covered the Urinals’ “Black Hole,” everyone had abandoned their earthly possessions and struck out for the floor, where errant limbs sang through the air and strangers shoved one another in earnest jubilance. After the last note of “Pony People,” the twelfth and final song of the evening, a wail of protest rose from the crowd like a rogue weather balloon. “MORE!” shouted the dwarfish mob, pressing in on the band with all the micro-mettle it could muster. “Well, ah, okay,” said the Intelligence, and with scarcely a breath they hurtled into a two-song encore every inch as electric and odd as before.
For a group to bluster through, set up shack in an underground watering hole and spank a few favorites is de rigueur; to do it in a new town, on a cold night, and grinning like the grill on a Buick is divine. It might also do a band some good to bang the bejesus out of their equipment and incite small outbreaks of shimmying, which, if we’re keeping score, is precisely what won the Intelligence its trophy on Tuesday evening. The tour trail blues seemed not to have soured their spirits in the least; if anything, Denver was a challenge they’ll gladly best again.
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Alex Edgeworth is a Denver-based freelance writer and regular contributor to Reverb.
