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SXSW Review: No Age at Radio Room Patio
(8 p.m., Thursday)
No Age must have had a plane to catch. The art-damaged L.A. punks were in and out of their Thursday showcase in roughly 20 minutes. But less turned out to be more, considering the amount of punishment doled out by drummer Dean Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall on any given song. There’s only so much of their anarchy - Spunt barking lyrics over the kit he’s annihilating, Randall banging his head and summoning aggro notes - one can take before you’re left feeling violated.
That feeling was reversed by the rock snobs gathered under the Sub Pop tent in the backyard of Transmission Entertainment’s newly minted Radio Room. Instead of joining the lone looney who was trying to form a mosh pit, as is the norm at No Age shows, the audience played the upright equivalents of the dude in the Maxell commercial who sits idly by as a speaker blows him away. Then again, the rock snobs may have simply been trying to process the complex mathematical equations that yielded the faintest of melodies.
It was thinking man’s punk. Think Sonic Youth. Think Fugazi. Think Pavement. And if that doesn’t hurt your brain, think about the t-shirt Spunt wore, which read “No Trend.” No Trend … No Age. No must really mean no.
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