Duo approaches songwriting without limits

No Age wants to be like your iPod, finding a place between genres

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, March 07, 2008

Here's the truth: The No Age set Feb. 16 at the Mohawk was so great I didn't bother to stay for headliners Liars.

This was probably pretty dumb; according to witnesses, Liars have been absolutely on fire this tour.

But it wasn't just that No Age, a Los Angeles-based duo of Dean Spunt (drums/vocals) and Randy Randall (guitars), threw down in a way both deeply punk rock and easy to understand. It was that there was something weirdly inspiring about them, as if this music could go anywhere. Randall's guitar moved from sheets of distortion one minute to almost-sprightly indie pop riffs the next. It's amazing stuff, both brainy and visceral. Both of the band's albums, last year's "Weirdo Rippers" (Fat Cat) and this year's coming "Nouns" (SubPop) deliver this dichotomy brilliantly.

No Age fell together in 2006 after the duo's hardcore trio, Wives, fell apart. The two decided to soldier on, bass-player-less. "The idea was how much can you get done with how little," Randall says. "It's a mantra of ours. Just see what would happen with two people only. Like the title of that Matthew Barney movie, 'Drawing Restraint 9.'"

Pause.

"That was really the most off-handed reference ever, huh," Randall says with a laugh. From other people it would sound pretentious. With these guys, it sounds like just another ingredient.

No Age are part of a new wave of bands pouring out of Los Angeles centered on a club called the Smell. Including such SXSW participants as Mika Miko, the Mae Shi and H.E.A.L.T.H., it's the first really vibrant, self-contained underground rock scene that town's had for awhile.

"It's a fun time," Randall says. "One of the nice things about that area is there's a large array of suburbs. You fester out there as you reach the age of leaving, you come to L.A. and meet other weirdos from the suburbs. You thought you were the only one making tapes in your bedroom and you meet a whole bunch of other people who became the same thing." (Spunt is from Santa Clarita, Calif.; Randall hails from near Pamona.)

And they're not shy about self-consciously trying to mash sounds and visions together. "Sub Pop is pretty amazing right now," Randall says. "It's the only label that has (extreme noise makers) Wolf Eyes, (South American dance-rockers) CSS and (indie pop sensations) the Shins. That's a wide range of styles and we would be psyched to be on a bill with any of those bands."

Think of No Age as a two-person iPod. "You look at folks' iPods and Baltimore club music comes after Cat Power. I think we try to run that gamut as well. I like noise and I like the Shangri-las; let's try to find a place between them.

"I think a lot of our idea toward music and art comes from the fact that we're big skateboarders," Randall adds. "It's a whole approach to the world. Most people look at a curb and a set of stairs and see that. Skateboarders see hours, if not days, of fun."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926