King Tuff, The Intelligence and Poor Moon @ Johnny Brenda’s.

Text and images by Brian Wilensky.

King Tuff brought his feel-good garage rock back to Johnny Brenda’s Monday night. And if it wasn’t to make the Fishtown crowd dance. It was to find out about something.

“It feels great to be back in Philly,” guitarist and singer Kyle Thomas, known as King Tuff to most, said mid-set. “But why does it smell like bacon everywhere?”

No one had an answer for him.

He and his moustached band – that’s right, they all had matching moustaches – sort of struck poses, smirked and made goofy gestures throughout the night while they rocked through much of this year’s critically acclaimed self-titled release. “Sun Medallion” and “Kind of Guy,” off their 2008 debut album Was Dead, stood out as the band’s tightest. The spell-along “Animal,” at the encore bit the crowd just right as everyone left amped and wearing smiles.

The Intelligence’s dissonant post-punk was fast paced, with little down time. The spastic “Hippy Provider,” from this year’s Everybody’s Got It Easy But Me, featured its weirdo-quivering keyboards, which last night stood on grandma-style walkers instead of a conventional keyboard stand. Approaching the end of their set “Moon Beeps,” off of Deuteronomy got a slightly extended intro so frontman Lars Finberg could take an extra sip of wine.

It couldn’t have been another song or two last before The Intelligence  droned out their last song into a messy wash of fuzz, when Finberg slithered along the front of the stage onto one of the nearby tables just underneath the balcony. Before anyone could tell what was going on he simply handed his guitar to some guy at the table and grabbed onto the pole wrapped in wires for lighting that scales the wall. He pulled himself up onto the balcony and over the railing just to run back down to the floor, grab his guitar from the guy, take the stage again and end the noisy jam.

Before The Intelligence, Poor Moon’s baroque-like mellow pop featured Christian Wargo and Casey Wescott of Fleet Foxes. The shakers on nearly every song, harpsichord keyboards and airy vocal melodies made for a sunny, west coast vibe, breezing by the entire time they had the stage. Unfortunately, they didn’t get much of the crowd since they came on first.

“We’ve got a real quality over quantity vibe going right now, guys,” said Wargo between songs.

But that’s not a bad thing.