No Age

Nouns

[4/5]

If the Jesus And Mary Chain had grown up listening to Superchunk, Sonic Youth and early Nirvana, perhaps they would have sounded something like No Age. Nouns, the youthful Los Angeles duo’s fantastic Sub Pop debut, bristles with primal energy and guttural bursts of noise that sear like acid rain. Bashing metallic-punk chaos (“Teen Creeps,” “Brain Burner”) peacefully coexists with hypnotic instrumentals tinged with distortion and cloudy-day melodies (“Keechie,” “Impossible Bouquet”). Better still is “Miner,” whose jackhammer guitars and feedback-soaked vocals surge like a raging tsunami, and “Things I Did When I Was Dead,” where a brittle piano and an eerie whirring sample conjure a desolate winter’s day. But despite these sawed-off edges, Nouns is an extremely accessible album; in fact, No Age turn the drab and grayscale into things of beauty-whether it’s noisy static, comet trails of distortion or tranquil bits of shoegaze-punk. (SUB POP) Annie Zaleski