Album Review: No Age - Snares Like A Haircut
Existing in the space that forms between beauty and
cacophony, the Los Angels based duo No Age pull elements from both a dreamy,
shoegazey aesthetic, with the confrontational edge of noisy, artistically
leaning punk rock.
Together for well over a decade, No Age has been relatively
quiet since the release of An Object
during the summer of 2013. Their minimalist website hasn’t been updated since
the end of October, but prior to that, it was used as a means to announce they
had signed to Drag City (leaving behind the hallowed name of Sub Pop) and were
prepping the release of Snares Like A
Haircut, their fifth full-length release.
For a band comprised of only two people—guitarist Randy
Randall and vocalist/drummer Dean Allen Spunt, No Age makes a lot of
noise—their songs are short, often full of nervy energy and tension, and are
incredibly dense, with Spunt’s rhythms often pummeling and punching their way
through Randall’s layers of frenetic electric guitar strumming, both dissonant
and melodic—occasionally both at the same time.
Snares has all of
those elements and more—it is hook driven, exuberant, and still moderately
accessible even when a song is weighed down by what seems like an ocean of
dissonance. A collection of 12 songs, there is energy to spare throughout, and
it’s structured so that only a handful of the songs aren’t seamlessly connected
from one to the next.
Opening with the blistering, cacophonic, and sneering
“Cruise Control,” Spunt and Randall never really let up, or lose their
momentum, even when Snares heads into
experimental territory, like the whirling, instrumental titular track, or the
cavernous, dizzying, and brash “Third Grade Rave,” which winds up being one of
the album’s finest and most interesting moments—and may, somewhere in there,
feature a saxophone?
I’ve been doing this for five years now, and I try to
remember—at least by name or cover art—the albums that I’ve written about. In
preparation for this review, I searched ‘No Age’ in my music library, and came
up empty handed, but did find an old (and rather short) write up on An Object from August 2013. It would
appear that while I had some pleasant things to say about the record, it’s not
the kind of thing that stuck with me, and the album did not survive some kind
of iTunes purging that took place between then and now.
I worry that the same fate may meet Snares Like A Haircut. Maybe it’s the time of year—through no fault
of their own, first quarter releases are notoriously forgettable as you make your
way through the rest of the year, and the myriad albums that come with it; or
maybe it’s that punk rock is hard. Noisy, experimental, guitar-heavy music is
not what I would listen to in the evenings as I read and sit with my companion
rabbit. It’s not what I would put on in the car as I run errands. It’s probably
not what I would listen to with headphones as I dink around on the computer
during my afternoons off from work.
Snares Like A Haircut,
and No Age’s commitment to making thought provoking, truly artistic, slightly
difficult while still being ‘listener friendly’ music is commendable and
admirable. They make it seem effortless but it more than likely is not—I don’t
know where you’d begin with finding the time to explore all of the various
guitar tones used here, or, simply, where the duo find the energy they pour
into each song, and how they manage to keep it going.
I’m uncertain if there is a ‘return to form’ with a band
like No Age; however, in an interview with Stereogum, Spunt agrees that An Object was not as well received as
their other efforts, and laments that fact. What Snares Like A Haircut does is finds the band walking a tightrope
that does a surprisingly even job of covering their various sonic ideas, all
while looking forward and refusing to look back.
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