Intelligence: Fake Surfers

Label: In the Red

In a year when lo-fi guitar rock has made waves (and Wavves), Fake Surfers by Intelligence has to come under consideration as one of 2009’s best. Mainman Lars Finberg is (hmm, maybe was?) the drummer in Seattle’s best rock band (that I know of), A Frames, but he is clearly one of those for-real modern polymaths. The cool rock styles and superb songwriting splattered across these 12 songs (in a tight, In the Red-style 32 minutes) reveal a knuckle-cracking grasp of the au courant style of underground-rock recording, but also a deep fondness and irreverent reverence for 60s-era Brit-mod moves, punk art of every stripe, and forms of rock that were never even properly invented. Fake Surfers is the kind of record you can lean your entire existence against for a while — you feel like Finberg & Co. really get what’s going on, is what I’m saying. Nine thumbs up! (M.L. Thrope)