Record review: No Age, "Nouns"

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By MICHAEL POLLOCK / Philadelphia Inquirer

3 stars

Money changes a lot of things, but it couldn’t change No Age. Picked up by Sub Pop after the success of their debut, Weirdo Rippers, the L.A.-based noise-rock duo promptly returned to the studio (three of them, in fact) to record “Nouns.”

Arriving less than a year after Rippers, Nouns is every bit as visceral, unpolished and explosive, and only a tad more compromising. Randy Randall’s motoring guitar — sometimes a scooter, other times a Harley — sounds less bleak, though that’s probably not intentional. On the other hand, Dean Spunt’s drumming, which has grown into something resembling a traceable, steady beat (“Cappo,” “Brain Burner“), is intentional. And so are the warm tones that surround songs like “Things I Did When I Was Dead.”

The ambience, especially, makes the record’s sprawling instrumental passages (“Impossible Bouquet” being the best, and strangest, of them) feel less like distractions and more like the point. This is the kind of maturity money can’t buy.