Either Bob Nordquist and his band are trying to put one over on us from the get-go, or they have a wicked sense of irony. They play under the name “The Intangibles,” and if you look up that word in the dictionary, it means something “that cannot be defined.” The irony is this band’s music can be defined. You define it with words like “moving” and “powerful” and “musical” and, last but not least, “rockin’.”

In this day and age, it's not particularly hard to figure out how to write a formulaic song, record it, release it and call yourself an “artist.” But as Leo Tolstoy observed, “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” That's where Nordquist and the Intangibles are coming from, and they transmit that feeling like it was humming along a 500-Kv power line.

The Animal Within really is an artistic work, chronicling all the animal's experiences, from raw instinct to deep introspection. These songs paint stories, and we’ll all recognize the emotional colors Nordquist uses. Loneliness. Joy. Sadness. Triumph. Submission. Humor. Irony. When we step back from the art, though, we might see the protagonist in The Animal Within as wandering through a maze, and he has to use both instinct and intellect to find a way out. In reality, the subjects in these songs are simply living their life. Van Gogh said “the innermost strength of the heart is developed” in fighting the difficulties of life.

Life is a maze. The walls are just too high for most of us to realize it. The Intangibles are here to help us find our way through.

-- David Hanners (Journalist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize)