The Wives were a band from LA that people in LA either loved or didn't get. I guess it’d be easy not to get it just seeing them once since half the shows I’ve seen them play have been some Idea they had come up with the night before usually involving 15 minutes of noise freak outs but when the wives did actually play the songs they had written they ruled hard with the most energy and a sound that was almost derived from 80’s crew core. However toward the end you couldn’t talk about the wives without someone going “Holy Shit that drummer is CraZay they Wouldn’t be anything without that DrUMmEr whoa” and he was brutally good…but then the wives broke up and 2/3’s (the bass player/singer Dean “have it you’re way” Spundt, and the guitarist Randy “I never meant to hurt anybody” Randall) birthed what would become something entirely different. DUDE I’m talking about NO AGE.
As a duo randy and dean have decided to trail into experimental power pop/electronic noise rock sometimes similar to seminal San Francisco band CHROME. I’m not saying you’ll love NO AGE if you like chrome but there’s a good chance you’ll “get it” at one of their shows. For instance the audience will be forced to enjoy long bellowing noise build-ups into songs that add an extra couple minutes to a song that could’ve been cut to 1 and a half minutes long and then get something a little bit more conventional than thought possible from a noise rock duo.
So Lets talk guitar tone. I usually don’t give a shit about this but randy has to be recognized as a master in the art of skronk. It’s not what he plays that so amazing; He usually keeps its rather simple, It’s the sounds he manages to get out of his guitar that fashion the over all feel of NO AGE. The dissonant progressions he shoves through his amp’s speakers contain freakish high and lows previously thought as annoying, suddenly make perfect sense. At the same time this is happening he might throw in a lead that could inspire the highlanders to take up arms and reclaim what’s rightfully there’s. Some serious Brave Heart shit is going on in Randy’s head.
Dean’s role in the band is one that varies. He plays the drums on the songs that need them sings on the non-instrumental ones and controls the drum machine which appears to be some kind of minidisk player that almost seems retro to the year 2000. I mean Christ who uses a minidisk player anymore. His singing is kind of flat similar to Mark E. Smiths (the guy who sings in the fall) version of singing but dean is much more direct and at times snotty. Like something you’d expect out of a more straight ahead punk rock band…. which is something they also are.
To sum it up NO AGE is the most straight-ahead punk rock noise duo/psychedelic/ Celtic/ band I’ve ever heard and I can’t wait for them to record a full length and I can’t wait for it take over the world. Currently they have a DVD? And a hell of a lot of bandanas that say “no age” all over them. You can probably get it all at www.myspace.com/nonoage.