Seattleite Lars Finberg might be better known as the drummer of the A-Frames. Or, if you’re from Seattle but don’t pay attention to quality music, you might know him as "that guy who used to work at Cellophane Square." Hopefully you know him for the first reason and not the latter. The Intelligence always seemed like the area’s best-kept secret, even as the A-Frames were garnering more attention, but that was fine — it just made the rest of us who knew of them seem cooler by comparison. Now? No one’s cool anymore; sorry.
2005’s In The Red-backed Icky Baby did a lot to get The Intelligence’s name out there. It also saw Finberg’s ’solo’ project flesh out into a fully realized band as he was joined by Factums’ drummer Matthew Ford and two members, Lee Reader and Nicholas Brawley, of the recently (at the time) broken-up Popular Shapes. While The Intelligence have been hanging around since 2000 with more changes in line-up than you might think, we get the stripped-down version on this release, which is Finberg, a guitar, drums, keyboards and a drum machine.
Over Boredom and Terror’s brief 26 minutes there is enough variation to keep things fresh. But who really needs variation when you’re doing something so perfectly? The drum machine and keyboard tandem of "Spellers and Counters" is an absolute gem. There’s also the outright pop of the lively "Weekends in Jail," which features the most fleshed-out sound, and all without keyboards. "Telephone Wires" is the other more conventional sounding rocker, with more catchy guitar chords and a memorable chorus. Matter of fact, nearly every song on here has a great hook. They’re great without being saccharine or trying too hard, and the weight of that success is mostly attributed to Finberg’s delivery. For example, who knows what he’s saying on the driving "Guys"? It doesn’t matter; it’s how he’s saying it that does. That might sound like a page from Pinback’s playbook, but it’s a safe bet that these lyrics aren’t quite so oblique. They’re just random.
In a perfect world, this would be popular music. Really, I can’t think of many reasons why this band hasn’t caught on. The music is ridiculously catchy, upbeat, clever, and you could probably dance to it if you were so inclined. Okay, there are a few f-bombs thrown in here and there, most philosophically on "The World Is A Drag," where Finberg asks the timeless question "Who gives a fuck if the world is a drag?" Certainly not I. The only track preventing Boredom and Terror from being a perfect album is “The Night Belongs to Microphones.” It’s not a bad track — not at all — but it suffers from being surrounded by some amazing songs. This album was originally going to be released as a double CD, but someone at Omnibus convinced Lars to scale it back and stick to just one disc. The leftover material was issued as a bonus CD to be packaged along with the 12-inch version ofBoredom and Terror that Narnack later put out. If only they would’ve switched out “Microphones” with "Darling, That Was A Lie" from that disc, then daaaaaaamn. That’s all I’m sayin’. - Tiny Mixtapes
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