No Age – Nouns Review
Oh Pitchfork and it’s unbelievable power over the internet. I wish I could drop a 4.6 out of 5 on an artist and it would be the latest craze but then again it would take years of credibility to earn and then I would have to make a 4.6 worthwhile by lowering the scores of every review I write. I’m too lazy for that and I’ll just cross my fingers and hope people check out the albums I hype.
Anyway No Age is a noise/experiment/punk rock band out of Los Angeles, California that got absolutely amazing reviews for their album Nouns not just from Pitchfork but from Tiny Mix Tapes known for being harsher (or snobbier).
I’d go straight into a review of the album but I’ll first have to talk about noise rock arguably one of my least favorite genres. Noise rock to me is personified with off-key notes, tons of distortion but intentional either to deliberately annoy or to make something beautiful with something that in all sense of music…pretty ugly. The problem for me is that when the goal is to annoy…I usually end up annoyed and having sift through the “noise” makes the music harder to listen to and my brain tends to feel exhausted after a few listens. At least my dislike for Noise is at least explainable.
Even though I do hate Noise, I don’t really hate this album. It is noise but with punk elements and good enough vocals that I can just take it all in at once and not have to worry about missing smaller details or forcing myself to ignore the noise.
I think you can tell if something is great in this fashion…I should in all sense of purposes hate No Age and their album Nouns but the way everything is layered and with all it’s randomness and weirdness it’s a pretty good experience just sitting back and listening to it. Maybe noise is the wrong word here? I’d have to say it feels hard like grunge, metal and post-punk but I guess they’ve really mastered the use of putting in dissonance all over their record without me caring that it’s there.
I still don’t think this is the perfect album…it’s a strange odyssey that I do wish to go back to and revisit all the elements over again but there are a few misses for me. The song “Things I Did While I Was Dead” feels so empty…and it actually had my head aching because there were very little elements or creativity compared to all the other tracks. It does have that annoying thriller type sound that I imagine would be for Poe’s tell-tale heart but otherwise it doesn’t have anything to offer. I would have to say the same about “Keechie” a good ambient track that I wouldn’t mind finding on a post-rock album but it just feels out of place here.
Overall: 4.3 out of 5.
Here Should Be My Home By No Age
Buy this album at: Insound, CD Universe and Amazon
