No Age Nouns CD

After saving L.A. rock with their bracing debut WEIRDO RIPPERS, in the process putting the Silverlake underground and its hub club The Smell on the map as well as turning up in the pages of the New Yorker, No Age returned with their Sub Pop debut NOUNS in 2008 and proved all the accolades well-deserved. Recalling milestone noise epics such as DAYDREAM NATION and LOVELESS in equal measure, NOUNS is a perfect collision of impulses: anxious guitar bursts, romo soundscapes, and a pop tunesmith's sense of melody. As producer Pete Lyman rekindles the emotive possibilities of a distorted guitar chord, it's hard to believe that a mere duo--drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall--are responsible for the near-symphonic clatter. Includes a 68-page booklet with pictures and art.
Divorced from all the talk about the return of the lo-fi sound, the scene revolving around the band's home base in L.A. (the Smell), and the group's rep as no-nonsense noise punks, you have the music of No Age. All that stuff is just background -- what matters is the sound coming down the wires as Nouns clatters and hisses on through to your ears. The duo of Dean Spunt (drums and vocals) and Randy Randall (guitar) are proudly noisy, drawing influence from early-'90s lo-fi acts like Eric's Trip as well as the New Zealand sound of that decade. They make no attempt to clean up their sound (though it does seem slightly more professionally recorded than the singles that made up their first release, Weirdo Rippers) as amps hum, drums clatter like garbage cans, and voices shout and holler. It's an arresting amount of noise and it may put you off initially. If you stick with it past the first wave of fuzz, though, you'll be captured by the songs, because No Age aren't about noise alone. Below that less than pristine (to be kind) sound there are songs. There are rollicking freak-outs ("Here Should Be My Home"), folk songs tossed about by waves of fuzz ("Eraser"), and careening rockers with hooky choruses ("Cappo"). Take them out and scrub them up a bit, and they would be as shiny and clean as things you might actually hear on the radio. After a polish it's not hard to imagine "Teen Creeps," for example, playing in the background of a teen movie. "Sleeper Hold," too, could be the theme song for any manner of triumphant scene; the chorus has the kind of hook you'll be singing all day. Choosing to bathe the songs in noise adds an extra layer of sound, sure, but also creates an epic battle between melody and noise, between beauty and grunge, that gives the album a real sense of drama. Also adding to the sense that something is at stake on Nouns are the lyrics. There are no simple love songs here -- mostly twisted fragments of isolation and ruin with the (very) occasional bit of tender hope thrown in to keep you from throwing in the towel. In the final count, melody and beauty, fractured as they may be, win the day. Like fellow noise poppers Times New Viking did on their awesome album Rip It Off, No Age turn noise into gold on Nouns. ~ Tim SendraRolling Stone (p.68) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "On cuts like 'Eraser,' which take cues from BLEACH-era Nirvana, Randall whips out gnarly riffs while Spunt bashes on his drums, singing about living paycheck to paycheck and trying to escape his lot in life."
Rolling Stone (p.96) - Ranked #50 in Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums Of 2008 -- "[A] thrilling string of two- and three-minute guitar rants..."
Spin (p.51) - Ranked #13 in Spin's "40 Best Albums Of 2008" -- "Randall's guitar shifts between glittering instrumental swells and diesel fuzz..."
Uncut (p.94) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "NOUNS is a success: delightfully dazed, good-times punk for a new generation of California dreamers."
Alternative Press (p.135) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "No Age turn the drab and grayscale into things of beauty -- whether it's noisy static, comet trails of distortion or tranquil bits of shoegaze-punk."
CMJ - "NOUNS never gets tiring. It's over quickly, before you can remember much of the blissful blur you just tried to consume in one gulp..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.106) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[A]n enticing tangle of frazzled noise and partly obscured melodies, playfully pulling the fluorescent din of Husker Du, My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr into fresh shapes."
Clash (magazine) (p.63) - Ranked #34 in Clash's "The 40 Best Albums of 2008" -- "The Sub Pop-released NOUNS is one of 2008's best punk long-players..."