The Intelligence & Tranquilazer. Nov. 17 at Towne Lounge

[November 21st, 2007]

[ROCK] It’s 9:30 pm at Towne Lounge and Tranquilazer isn’t quite ready to hit the stage. Band members and friends have taken over the Lounge’s coveted circular booth, which is cluttered with goblet-style pints. Tranquilazer guitarist-vocalist Aaron Miller hollers across the room to bassist Emilie Strange; she shrugs and indicates that she can’t hear a word he’s saying. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously,” 26-year-old Strange tells me. “We don’t really expect anyone else to either.”

Around 10 pm, the set starts with the unsettling sound of knuckles being cracked into the microphone. The band launches into a Fugazi-meets-Blood Brothers track on which Miller’s half-spoken, half-chanted vocals compete with keyboardist Brain Swain’s birdlike squeals. Swain leaves his post to gently accost friends in the front row; they react like high-schoolers watching performance art, unsure whether to laugh or rub their chins. The audience is more at ease with “The Drunkard’s Walk,” the first of a string of songs to elicit giddy audience participation. For a band whose official motto is “good enough,” Tranquilazer’s set is actually pretty revelatory.

It’s 10:45 pm: Brookyln’s Super Monster doesn’t stand a chance. The group’s early-Beatles garage rock isn’t getting much attention, and one song ends to absolute silence. Not even a clap.

Out in the alley, the Intelligence’s Lars Finberg is teaching his bass player a new song. The band’s current synth player, Susanna Welbourne, had to leave the tour suddenly after a death in the family. Luckily, the Intelligence is a band compared to the Fall as much for its shrapnel-infused sound as for the latter’s constant lineup changes. “But it’s not like I’m kicking people out of the band,” Finberg says. “They come back!” One phone call to the band’s ex-bass player, Min Yee, and he was back on board for the rest of the tour.

You’d never guess any of this drama from the Intelligence’s set (except for the off-the-cuff lyric, “Who gives a fuck if we’ve got a new bass player every night?”). Seattle-based Finberg, his Portland-based drummer Kaanan Tupper and Yee play flawlessly together, their angular fuzz holding steady even as a pair of drunk fans toppled backward over a front-of-the-stage monitor.

An encore seems unlikely given the circumstances, but the Intelligence lays three extra tracks on the energetic crowd. It sounds perfect. Grown men gush and ask for autographs after the show.