No Age understands two things especially well: they know that good-looking products will sell better than ugly ones and they understand the importance of keeping busy in an industry dominated by infuriatingly brief cycles of hype and backlash. In the last two years, the Los Angeles basement punk duo, comprised of drummer Dean Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall, has delivered two acclaimed full-lengths. One, called Weirdo Rippers, was originally released as five singles on five different labels that spelled the band’s name for the lucky few who actually managed to acquire all five. The other, Nouns, was accompanied by a brilliantly-designed collection of tour photos. This year, they’ve scored a film, performed Hüsker Dü songs with Bob Mould, who hasn’t played many of them since 1987, and have supposedly been at work on their next record in the downtime. Their signature shirt design: the band’s name, in all caps and rainbow lettering: has been captured on the Colbert Report, as well as on Radiohead members. Needless to say, No Age is keeping busy.
Losing Feeling, a four-track EP and the band’s first widely-released material since last year, is another dense, textured slab of noisy pop music replete with sonic details and guitar noise. The record (and I do mean record, as the EP is only available on vinyl and in digital formats) is bookended by two fast songs. “Losing Feeling” bursts through a wall of delayed guitar haze and Spunt’s tom-heavy percussion to reveal some fairly straightforward pop, though its bridge is all sorts of gorgeous. The real winner, however, is closer “You’re a Target,” which is really quick, really loud and possibly the most hardcore-influenced track the band’s released up to this point, with Spunt recalling Hüskers’ drummer Grant Hart to explosive effect across a ton of quick chord changes.
Whereas fellow southern Californian Wavves’ records bury his tunes beneath layers and layers of ugliness, Randall uses noise and feedback to complement, rather than bury, arrangements, and it does help to set them apart from the plethora of bands that use noise to hide their lack of proficiency or inability to write concise, engaging music, descriptions that don’t apply to No Age’s racket. Spunt’s drumwork doesn’t function like a blunt object, and his dense playing comes through quite clearly. The two tracks that come between the more obvious singles here test this by operating at extremes: “Genie” does away with drums altogether, leaving just Spunt’s warbling vocals beneath their guitar haze and the song’s the better for it, and “Aim at the Airport” is practically ambient by No Age’s standards, delving entirely into an exploration of layered synths and electric guitars, setting up the explosive finish of “You’re a Target.”
Losing Feeling as a whole doesn’t do a lot to push the band in a new direction, but that’s not really what the EP format does best unless only intended as a brief stylistic diversion. Instead, it consolidates their strengths, demonstrates in even less time than Nouns what they do well and indicates that the next record could sound a fair amount like the last one. It also does a pretty good job of saying “Yes, the next product will probably also be quite listenable and possibly well-designed.”
