Favourite Releases of 2012: The Intelligence - Everybody’s Got It Easy But Me (In the Red)

Although a familiar t-t-tat-ty drum machine beat opens quirky San Fran punk rockers the Intelligence's eighth album Everybody's Got It Easy But Me, after a few minutes, the first track "I Like L.A." suddenly halts. Singer and guitarist Lars Finberg announces: "Ladies and gentlemen: the band," and, like flipping a switch, suddenly, "I Like L.A." changes gears into a more colourful hi-fi performance complete with live drumming.

From the moment Lars introduces the band, EGIEBM never looks back to its trinkety beginning. Nor does the album ever falter. Anxious, jittery, hip-shaker/breath-takers "Hippy Provider" and "Evil Is Easy" shoot forth like jolts of electricity from the ends of cut wire. Even when the Intelligence slow down on the lightly strummed "Techno Tuesday," one of their rare songs with acoustic guitar and their only song I can remember that features horns, their respite is short-lived as more clamorous songs come in such quick succession that it feels like the band never slows.

Sometimes, a band's switch to high-fidelity can detract from their music, polishing the band's snare unremarkably slick and the production itself becoming a point of attention. But the opposite can occur, too: the high-fidelity of EGIEBM does nothing but favours in letting the Intelligence's off-kilter riffs and sharp, note-picked guitars, amplified by forceful, though not exactly tight, drumming, punch and stab more tactually than ever. EGIEBM even manages to sound cleaner than their previous album, 2010's Males, perhaps because even though EGIE sounds equally clean, it literally has more details to hear: its instrumentation is more varied and includes many similar sound effects as their earlier, sometimes seemingly far-out-for-the-sake-of-being-far-out albums. Thus, I listen to EGIE more attentively and take greater notice of its production rather than let the songs bowl over me as I do when listening to the comparatively simple Males.

Although not as streamlined as Males or as eccentric as their early albums, instead falling refreshingly in the middle, Everybody's Got It Easy But Me still features some firsts for the Intelligence in addition to "Techno Tuesday"'s horns, however few. The surfy "Little Town Flirt" is pure acoustic pop, a complete anomaly for the band. "Little Town Flirt" is also their first female-led song, and Lars sings in a key high enough that at first, it's difficult to believe (or at least tell) it's him.

"Little Town Flirt" should be about the only truly unfamiliar moment on Everybody's Got It Easy But Me for Intelligence fans. That the album otherwise combines the best elements of one of my favourite bands and somehow makes forty-four minutes seem brisk, lending to its endless re-playability, makes Everybody's Got It Easy But Me not only one of my favourite albums by the Intelligence but one of my favourite albums of the year as well.