Living & Arts

No Age fills ‘void’

In print | May 1, 2008

Following the success of last year’s “Weirdo Rippers,” Los Angeles-based noise-punk band No Age is set to release their second full-length and much anticipated album, “Nouns,” next week. While “Weirdo Rippers” was really more of a compilation, a collection of highlights from the band’s five earlier, vinyl-only EPs, “Nouns” marks their first cohesive full-length album as well as their first release on Sub Pop.

Though guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/singer Dean Spunt are the band’s only two members, the duo has always managed to produce much more blaring, clamorous racket than you’d ever expect from two people with a few instruments, and that hasn’t changed. Despite the band’s move to major Seattle-based label Sub Pop, “Nouns” is stylistically similar to what No Age has recorded in the past — noisy, ambient garage rock, droning fuzz, thundering drums, thrashing guitar and raw, guttural vocals. The songs, though short, are epic in their build-ups and masterfully integrate the raucous art of tension and release into the structure and melodies of pop. While “Weirdo Rippers” was by its very nature a loose association of songs, “Nouns” is a much more cohesive, substantial album. The racket is the same, but this time the songs sound less spontaneous and more tightly stitched together; No Age restlessly burns through track after track, racing time as they try to outrun the inevitable end of the album, making a sound that is monumentally big and overwhelmingly loud.

With titles like “Things I Did When I Was Dead,” “Ripped Knees” and “Brain Burner,” the songs on “Nouns” are aggressively insistent on a raw, intense kind of physicality. No Age isn’t just playing music for you to hear; they’re playing music for you to feel someone else’s elbow piercing into your ribs as your eardrums vibrate more rapidly than the speaker you’re standing directly in front of and strangers’ sweat is being flicked onto your face. “Teen Creeps,” with its jangling guitars, electric, beeping noise, heavy, thrashing drums and hoarse, raspy sound marks a high point on the album and comes right after “Eraser,” the song chosen to be the first single off of “Nouns,” a droning, catchy tangle of plucking and banging that speaks of what’s seen, unseen, and selectively ignored. One of the best songs off of the album, “Here Should Be My Home,” comes toward the end and is a catchy pop anthem that starts off simple with thumping drums and chugging guitars before exploding into a turbulent, entropic tumult of sound, noise and rhythmic clamors.

“Nouns” isn’t just an album, it’s an environment, one that’s visually represented in the large booklet of vibrantly buzzing images and brightly colored art that accompanies the CD. Sheets of bold, solid colors pop up intermittently amongst the series of tattered photographs that feature tightly packed music venues and messy practice spaces, dilapidated buildings in Downtown L.A., overcrowded stacks of worn-out cassette tapes, rolls of bright stickers and snapshots of college students from places like Bard, Oberlin and Brooklyn. The Smell, the Downtown Los Angeles music space where No Age played their first actual show, is the first of this series of images, and it is this exact life-affirming spirit of the Los Angeles D.I.Y. art scene that is embodied in the band’s sound and style. It is loud, bold, confident, messy, spastic and rough — it kicks, shouts, jumps, dances and punches, it bangs on instruments and makes garage-style racket sound like fun, up-beat, neon-colored pop songs, music that can be appreciated by all.

Anna is a sophomore. You can reach her at azaloko1@swarthmore.edu