No Age

Somewhere on No Age's "Loosen This Job," in the thatch of Randy Randall's guitar noise and the spiny drum clicks of Dean Spunt, one can just make out Randall's yelp of "Why are there so many records in my life?" Or so it seems. In a recent interview, Randall revealed that he actually says "records of my life," but such misinterpretation suits No Age too. The group can be paranoid about Total Information Awareness while obsessing over their Troubleman Unlimited 7-inch collection too.

This young Los Angeles-based duo surrounds itself with vinyl in more ways than one: It extols the virtues of everyone from Greg Ginn to Kevin Shields, Pavement to Karp, while simultaneously releasing a spate of singles on five different DIY labels, all on the same day! Those sides are conveniently collected on Weirdo Rippers, a brusque and invigorating half-hour of ambient guitar baths and guttural outbursts. While opener "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy" cloaks itself in the type of static that Pavement did circa Perfect Sound Forever, No Age then goes full throttle on "Boy Void."

Throughout Weirdo Rippers, No Age proves adept at nailing four-track texture and crafting catchy punk hooks. On standout "Dead Plane," the pair looses three minutes of feedback bliss before plunging into three-chord fuzz that would have been redolent of the Ramones, had the latter copped both Brian Eno's adenoidal British accent and his Discreet Music tendencies.