Drag City Records, June 5, 2020
L.A. noise mavens No Age put out a new manifesto.
No Age aren’t punk like I typically listen to. They’re a severely art-damaged two-piece that use guitar loops and all sorts of effects to create music that is sometimes visceral, sometimes spare, and sometimes disorienting. And when they do it best, they figure out how to touch all those bases.
I fell hard for early No Age. The early comp Weirdo Rippers had no real flow to it, a literal hodge-podge of single songs, not a real album. But it hit hard for me. It seemed so hazy and bursting-at-the-seams at the same time, something rarely accomplished. And their follow-up, the first real full-length Nouns blew me away. It was cohesive and melodic and, at least in my head, got me thinking of the Hüsker Dü wall of sound, and in the best ways. But for whatever reason, I’ve been sort of checked out since. The new one, Goons Be Gone, pulls me back in.
Goons Be Gone has the heady and noisy thing going, and sometimes they burst with a propulsive thunder and lightning crashes. Songs like “Feeler” and “Sandalwood” revel in the effects-laden noise of Randy Randall. “Feeler” in particular, brings a real bounce with the drums while a pretty spare guitar figure goes full earworm and clean vocals ease us in before noisy guitars and accents come washing in, alternating back and forth throughout. Elsewhere, “A Sigh Clicks” rattles and crashes as the melodies wheeze in and out like a breath. “War Dance” and “Turned To String” find hypnotic harmonics in the noisy guitar maelstrom with melodies that ebb and flow (“War Dance”) and waver (“Turned To String”) and each will work into your brain as drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt sings in a dry tone that reminds me of Jonathan Richman (even asking you to board his “astral plane”). I mean, each of them have layers of pop, and I guess one of my favorite things about the best No Age songs is that you can often hum along each time you listen, but sometimes humming a different melody from the one that is most obvious. Yea, it’s good stuff.
All that said, Goons Be Gone isn’t perfect. For all the bursts, sometimes the music meanders and drifts. “Working Stiff Takes A Break” is basically vocals over a guitar effects loop that meanders for a minute and seems pretty inconsequential and same goes for the twinkly, pulsing, and longer “Smoothie”. And “Toes In The Water” is a sort of shoegaze thing where warm fuzz blankets glitchy noises and creates some pretty weird harmonics. It’s not bad, even cool at points, but with no vocals and no real forward momentum, it tests my admittedly limited patience. Really, none of these are deal breakers, but they make up three of the first six songs, sucking some momentum away from the rest of the terrific chaos on the first half of the record.
Goons Be Gone isn’t my favorite No Age record. But it’s easily my favorite No Age record in the last ten years. This gets them back on my radar and gives me some weirdly bursting yet hazy music to go along with some hazy summer days.
You might like this if:
- You like art-damaged stuff with layers to dig into
- You like lots of effects and noise
You might not if:
- You want your music simple and to-the-point
- You think art-damaged stuff is pretentious
ryan is a reviewer and news editor for TGEFM. He’s very secretive, he might be an alien.
