Persons, Places, Things

Nouns
No Age
Sub Pop, 2008
4 stars 4.5 stars

One of the things I love about No Age is the drumming. At times it sounds like they're just making it up on the spot, smacking whatever is close, just enough to form a beat that will push their trolley of fuzzy pop down the road. Other times it's pure garage, tight and taut, but without a beat out of place. This style of percussion was all over Weirdo Rippers, and it forms the basis of Nouns too - the canvas if you will - with a wide palette of guitar noise supplying the colour. Rippers was remarkably cohesive for a compilation, and Nouns takes it even further, without forfeiting any of the spontaneity or variety. The moments on this album that make you sit up and notice are the shifts between styles, such as when punchy low-fi rocker Cappo gives way to spacious instrumental Keechie, then follows up with the rampant drumming and surging melody of album highlight Sleeper Hold. Singer/drummer Dean Spunt's vocals are just as slack-sounding as ever - it's a sound that works perfectly - but these guys are no slouches, as the 60+ page art book that accompanies the album shows. Nouns is an album of not just light and shade, but all the tones between as well.

Artwork: A+

Bloody Ripper

Weirdo Rippers
No Age
Sub Pop, 2007
4.5 stars

Noise is back, and with it are the ripped jeans, flannelet shirts and long hair that made up the '90s grunge aesthetic. Los Angeles' No Age are at the front of a wave of acts trying their hand at post-grunge at the moment, but they stand out with a sound as much about distorted guitars and garage drumkits as it is ambient surf-rock atmospherics. These guys have a really full sound for a guitar/drums two-piece, and though its eleven tracks have been cut from five EPs issued last year, Weirdo Rippers is incredibly coherent as a whole. The DIY feel of these album does a good job of disguising how thought-through and clever the songs really are, and you can bet this is no mistake - as visual artists themselves, these guys would know all about manufacturing disorder. Either way, it's just exciting to listen to a band that's hitting all the right notes, and Rippers is proof of a band at the top of their game. Hopefully they've saved some game for their first 'real' LP Nouns, due May.

Artwork: A