The word “intelligentsia” in an album title is usually a hint of conceptual heavyosity to come. Or at least an attempt at heavyosity: sometimes, as in this case, what you get instead are cookie-cutter sociopolitical pronouncements that could have been transcribed straight out of Catcher in the Rye, sung in a quavery, plain-guy warble that betrays not a hint of self-awareness or irony. To read this album’s song titles is to know exactly what each song’s message will be: “Young Professional” (“You’re off to work, so where’s your mask?”), “Unconscious Collective” (“Your need to rebel is your need to belong”), “Nationalism” (“The borders are drawn, the banners are waved”), “Self-Propagating Mechanisms of Religion” (“They’ll congregate and organize themselves”) — sing along, you know the words. While the music tends towards a certain self-dramatizing mopeyness, it’s also sporadically intriguing, as on the broken-down waltz of “Nationalism”, the rather punky “Stimulus-Bound Behavior” and the sad but very pretty “Attempt at Qualification”. But lyrically? There are probably still interesting and original things to be said on the topics of corporatism, religion, nationalism and hip conformity, but you sure can’t prove it by this band.
- Rick Anderson
All Music Guide
October, 2006