An Object
Considering punk rock and its endless permutations have been with us for decades, it\'s no surprise that musicians working the neighborhood embrace and attack the form, often simultaneously. The melodies come quickly. The chords fall in line more swiftly. But then a decision must be made: does a group keep it simple or try to unlock something new? The Los Angeles–based art-punk duo No Age always has catchy melodies; it\'s what it does to them that makes things interesting. \"I Won\'t Be Your Generator,\" \"Lock Box,\" and \"C\'mon, Stimulating\" have the guts of Ramones songs tucked inside the chaos, but the dirty mixes and haphazard recording methods ensure the appeal is either enhanced or rubbed raw. It\'s a matter of how attached one is to traditional presentations and why potential fans need to be okay with the \"art\" aspect of art-punk. For example, \"An Impression\" and \"Running from a Go-Go\" are No Age\'s ballads, where simple guitar parts melt into sawing instruments and vocals make little attempt to be heard over the orchestral-junkyard weave.
With An Object, their fourth full-length album, No Age has forgone the straight and narrow route, landing in a strange and unexpected place, feet planted in fresh, fertile soil. This new LP finds drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt exploding from behind his kit, landing percussive blows with amplified contact mics, 4-string bass guitars, and prepared speakers, as well as traditional forms of lumber and metal. Meanwhile, guitarist Randy Randall corrals his previously lush, spastic, sprawling arrangements into taught, refined, rats’ nests. Lyrically Spunt challenges space, fracturing ideological forms and complacency, creating a striking new perspective that reveals thematic preoccupations with structural ruptures and temporal limits. As the title An Object suggests, these eleven tracks are meant to be grasped, not simply heard. Whether in the fine grit of Randall’s sandpaper guitar scrapes on “Defector/ed,” or Spunt’s percussive stomp and crack on “Circling with Dizzy” and “An Impression,” these are songs that pivot on the sheer materiality of music-making, incorporating the process every step of the way. Still, this is hardly a work of avant garde noise music. These songs are hummable, political, recognizably rooted in underground rock, and informed by an understanding of sound as a material to be shaped, handled, and worked over. It is an aesthetic in which the relationships between guitar, percussion, and vocals—as well as those between rhythm and melody—become relationships between things. These relationships are built into An Object at every level. In collaboration with friend and Grammy-nominated designer Brian Roettinger (5 E.P.‘s, Nouns, Losing Feeling, Everything In Between), the band prepared and assembled the physical packaging of An Object, including jackets, inserts, and labels, fusing the roles of manufacturer, artist, and musician into one. It is this sense of the total work of art that underlines An Object as the culmination of two years of touring, writing, and performing, finding No Age moving into new terrain at the height of their powers. An Object was recorded by longtime No Age collaborator Facundo Bermudez and No Age at Gaucho’s Electronics in Los Angeles.
No Age's strikingly spare third album proves that all the reverb, feedback, and velocity of their past work were hardly afterthoughts or subversive tactics to disguise pop songs. For the most part, An Object consists of potential rock songs denied everything they need to actually rock*.*
On 2010’s Everything In Between, No Age cleaned up its sound just enough to bring its melodies to the forefront, creating a thrilling contrast of tuneful riffs and surging dissonance—and resulting in one of the best noise-pop records in recent memory. On the follow-up, An Object, drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt and…
Randy Randall and Dean Spunt still sound like no-one else but themselves, but refreshed somehow.
One quality you can’t always get across on multi-reviewer sites like Paste is that an album might be a disappointment to…
Los Angeles art punks No Age have always strained uneasy ambience out of the energy of hardcore and vice versa.
Los Angeles based duo No Age’s previous albums explored the boundaries between noise, punk and melodic indie-rock, with frequent beatific results. Their fourth album An Object finds them on rather more jagged territory, guitarist Randy Randell’s washed out noise-scapes scaled back to angular rhythms and taut riffs. Drummer and singer Dean Spunt yelps the words out with force and conviction, with the album sounding markedly less produced than previous outings.
Uh-oh, No Age is messin' with the formula. Their sound had its expansion and now it's time to retract a little, to lean toward some of those punk roots rather than reveling in all that blissful guitar/noise wash.
Album review: Clash covers 'An Object', the new record from Sub Pop-signed duo No Age
No Age's 'An Object' employs dissonance to suggest restlessness and unease, but it can also be often tedious. Read our review.
Review of No Age's "An Object" by Northern Transmissions. "An Object" will be released 8/20th on Sub Pop records. No Age will start their tour 8/16 in LA.
No Age did everything themselves for their new album – writing, recording, designing, manufacturing – but they don't always make it sound much fun, writes <strong>Harriet Gibsone</strong>