An Object is protest music. Though their crusade is more principled than political, No Age employ a common countercultural tactic on their third proper LP, reappropriating a derogatory term: what are you calling an object? This is art, with an intrinsic value that cannot be quantified or commoditized and society is worse off when any record is treated differently. But the irony is that it's a clever marketing tactic whether intentional or not; No Age’s music, successful as it’s been, never tells their whole story. Whether it’s the Smell, the T-shirts, the "planned contradictory action," Dean Spunt’s Post-Present Medium label, or anything else bearing their imprimatur, the band’s always been a multimedia affair. They are a bundle of righteous affiliations, “lifestyle music” for people who shudder at the term because their lifestyle is an ethos, upholding certain ideas about DIY, local scenes and anti-corporatism.
When speaking to us earlier this year, Randy Randall promised a total teardown and the time did feel right for the duo to sell high on the “dream-punk” sound they’ve cultivated since Weirdo Rippers. Strikingly spare compared to their previous releases, An Object ensures the shortest distance between the listener and the songs, but with an idealistic corollary that still momentarily shifts the focus away from the music-- with Sub Pop’s blessing, the duo packaged and shipped the record with their own four hands. But what’s left of No Age when you take away the “dream-“ and “-punk”? An Object proves that all the reverb, shrieking noise, and velocity of their past work were hardly afterthoughts or subversive tactics to disguise pop songs. They were essential and the actual mechanics of songwriting-- melody, harmony, structure, instrumental chops-- are exposed on An Object as something that’s far down the list of No Age’s strengths.
You sense that in the three year hiatus between Everything in Between and now, the songs came quickly and most of the time was spent painstakingly turning them inside out-- to mute the drums or excise them completely, use feedback as a backdrop rather than an overlay, to turn rhythms into melody, bass into treble. This is the album that might’ve better earned the title Everything in Between, as the songs are composed of scraps, MacGyver tricks achieved with contact mics, bass guitars, and doctored amps. Occasionally, the effort manifests in notable progress. “An Impression” has a novel rhythmic swing that could actually pass for dancehall and the miniature bumps and bleeps bleed into sighing strings-- it’s No Age’s most typical “pretty” moment, something that could sway people who don’t seek out beauty in harmonic feedback.
But for the most part, An Object consists of potential rock songs denied everything they need to actually rock*.* The minimalism doesn’t make for a fighting trim No Age-- they sound emaciated, subject to a crash diet equally fueled by asceticism and stubbornness. None of which is helped by the clammy production, which casts a green-grey, sickly pallor over An Object rather than clarity. On past records, Spunt’s rigid vocals could most kindly be described as “effective in context,” but freed from the obligations of beating the shit out of his drums, he shrinks in the spotlight. There aren’t vocal melodies on An Object, so much as 11 iterations of one note being budged until it moves in the slightest one way or the other. Meanwhile, Randall forgoes riffs for granular, ephemeral textures and rather than building tension through restraint, the lack of rhythmic, tonal or melodic variation causes the album’s midsection to drone more than their past work which intended to be drone music.
No Age attempt to compensate by making An Object their most lyrically direct album, and at the outset, most of Spunt’s words are pointed towards “you.” You know who “you” are-- “Who do you think you are/ trying so hard/ to make that stage/ but it’s not made that way,” “When I see you/ underneath your lies,” “You’re a broken leg/ a knife with no blade.” It’s “us vs. the man, maaaan” boilerplate for sure, though the generality can work in the favor of a band that’s always had a cause but not much of a rallying cry. When Spunt sings “I won’t be your generator/ you get no power from me,” odds are it’s a bird flip to corporations who co-opt underground art, gentrify scenes, and buy out idealism, or whatever. But if you don’t know the first thing about No Age’s extracurriculars, “I Won’t Be Your Generator” is a multi-purpose rager at parents, bosses, boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever’s harshing your buzz. Much like ditching the drums, it’s an obdurate artistic move that’s effective three minutes at a time. But when a band that’s taken up the role of indie’s moral compass gets stuck in the same black and white thinking on “No Ground” and “C’mon, Stimmung”, the pervasive “you” becomes a strawman version of actual No Age enemies like Kings of Leon and Walmart-- certainly worthy of derision, but too big to bother fighting back in a way that might put those principles to the test.
As An Object trudges forward, a strange and welcome change slowly occurs; you can sense No Age growing fatigued enough to let their guard down. After spending the first half of An Object raging against shadowy power brokers, they’ve retained their autonomy only to find out they can’t outrun their own shadows. “Running From A-Go-Go” is the first point where the drab tone matches the mood; when Spunt complains about “bullshit on the stereo,” he’s probably not taking shots at Imagine Dragons or Macklemore or anyone else specific. It’s just a mundane acknowledgement of a touring musician’s crippling boredom, abject, incapacitating loneliness and how inadequate the moral high ground from earlier can be against emotional encroachment-- “There’s no escaping when it pays your way/ I tell myself it’s one more day/ and one more night alone again.”
On Nouns, Spunt shouted “with passion, it’s true!” So does the pervasive disillusionment of An Object make it false? Of course, not-- the subjects at hand are taken straight from Spunt and Randall’s lives, they've never dealt in fictional songwriting. But perhaps it’s too real, as you get the sense that the hot-button topics that can sustain a punk rocker through their 20s-- art vs. commerce, stability vs. freedom, underground vs. mainstream-- eventually grow tiresome and repetitive and best left to those who have the time and energy for endless debate. That doesn’t mean these conversations shouldn’t happen and perhaps An Object can spark a few. But as a musical document more utile and enjoyable as a conversation piece than for its intended purpose of listening, An Object sadly lives up to its own name.
