Review Summary: LA art-punkers No Age deliver a debut CD that pays tribute to the noisy DIY scene that opened the doors for them. Weirdo Rippers is everything you loved about punk without any of the rigid parameters.
"We'd be nothing without the Smell," says No Age in an XLR8R interview. This attitude is easy to find throughout their debut CD, Weirdo Rippers. The LA club has provided as sort of a teen center for these guys and their friends and their music. The live show is a performance piece, which features the duo Dean Spunt and Randy Randall making their guitar-drum duo sound like a whole neighborhood of garage bands going at it. The most obvious influence is Sonic Youth, who embody the bands nack for stripped down punk and ethereal shoe-gaze. It's not exactly the sound of everything you thought was music crumbling in front of you, but it does prove well beyond their years; for a debut CD, this a rare find.
The track "Sun Spots" is a real highlight, which sounds like My Bloody Valentine interpreting the Boards of Canada in it's extremely colorful expanse of fuzzy drums and commitment to rupturing traditional song structure. The band descend back to more traditional, rollicking punk with "My Life's Alright Without You". Weirdo Ripper's opener, "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy" may be their strongest effort. Combining the the focused dissonance of the majority of their tracks with a catchy surprise relapse into rock and roll towards the end.
No Age don't verbally promise any great things to come, they shack-up in the LA art scene where you're here today, gone tomorrow. The music however, speaks for itself, and in their lack of aspiration to take themselves seriously, we may be witnessing the future leaders of the noise rock game in their infancy.
