No Age at the Majestic Theatre
Jess Dennis
No Age brought some seering visuals as well.
No Age has certainly come a long way since it dragged the scene around Los Angeles’ The Smell onto the blogs in 2007. Back then, the band was known for three-minute “weirdo rippers,” blasts of hot, fuzzy punk that mixed the best ambient shoegaze with the best hardcore punk. The group expanded its sound and grew up a bit on this year’s excellent Everything In Between; so much so, the duo of drummer Dean Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall needed a third guy, who wielded a drum machine and other electronic equipment, to bring the band’s songs to life at the Majestic Theatre Monday night.
Pulling heavily from Everything, No Age’s set—which also featured live video work on a projection screen behind the band—was a remarkable tinnitus-causing mountain of humming haze that lasted for more than an hour with little relief. The biggest cheers from the crowd came during cuts from 2008’s Nouns, especially the thrashy “Teen Creeps,” “Miner,” and “Eraser.” At times, a moderately sized mosh pit broke out, eventually claiming one audience member’s glasses, which got broken in a melee. “Call our lawyer,” Spunt said after the mosher threw a piece of his broken glasses onstage. “Just kidding. We don’t have a lawyer.”
No Age was supported by Madison’s Peaking Lights—who brought a wonderfully glacial set of dreamy pop—and Lucky Dragons—who sat in the middle of the crowd with a laptop and various sound modulators, and then proceeded to turn the crowd into his musical instruments and band members. The gesture of playing in the pit wasn’t lost on the crowd that seemed happy to be so intimately involved in making music with the high-tech instruments—like cords that generate sounds through static electricity—Lucky Dragons put in their hands.
For their part, Randall and Spunt kept the banter to a bare minimum, letting the music speak for itself. The band’s set could be slightly monochromatic in tone at times—what with hardly changing the lo-fi atmospherics over the deluge of three-minute songs—but set highlights “Life Prowler” and “Glitter” proved No Age has had its sights set on something bigger than just being a good punk band for a while now. No Age left little doubt that it’s not just the best band from The Smell scene in L.A., but that it’s a nationally touring monster that should no longer be measured by its roots.
