Article - The Intelligence gets lost in space

Fake Surfers, the fourth album from Seattle’s junk-punk, noise-pop foursome the Intelligence, begins like the opening scene from The Godfather.

The opening track slowly pans across hazy tones while a haunted, sci-fi traipse carries as much of the album’s punch as the songs themselves. There’s no telling if the same languid pace will dominate the record, or if it will suddenly burst into a cacophony of crunching, art-rock kerang. But the tension soon breaks as a wall of ecstatic guitars take hold in “Tower.”

“I have always loved that Peter Gunn guitar sound — a little reverb and something super simple played on one string,” says the group’s vocalist and founding member, Lars Finberg, as he mills over a list of antiquated science-fiction fodder from Devo to Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that has shaped his palette.

Such influences bubble to the surface throughout Fake Surfers. “I’ve always wanted to create a weird view of the future from the ’60s perspective that has this strange sense of nostalgia to it,” Finberg adds. “Like in 2001 there is something timeless and warm about that naive view of the future, and we’re really going for that. Those old space echoes and reverb sound really nice to my ears. Even when you’re trying to do a punk rock thing.”

Such songs as “Debt & ESP” and “Thank You God for Fixing the Tape Machine” unfold with clunky, surf-rock flair, while others — “Warm Transfers” and “Pony People” — reveal a DaDa pop songwriter cadence steeped in the fuzz of ’60s beach and analog sounds. It makes Fake Surfers a cohesive album that’s both campy and cinematic with a precise marriage of noise and pop.