THURSDAY SEP 06, 2018
No Age
With the world around us bruised and bloodied with teeth already dug into the concrete curb, we find ourselves with the shadow of a large boot looming overhead. What better time for No Age? Remember, they are the ones who first brought you the hospital-bed-feel-good-anthem, “Get Hurt” (2007). They know how to ecstatically rage and power on thru pain, because what else are you gonna do? The future belongs to the cockroaches, and this record is made for the disparate band of misfits who 2017 couldn’t kill. Yeah. New No Age! Not new age No Age (except for the odd “Sun Spots”/“Keechie”-style shimmer that only ever makes everything better), but definitely an age of album-making located somewhere beyond and back from where we last heard ’em in aught-13, when they’d wrapped their process in as much deconstruction as An Object could bear. Reimagined rippers, compelling ever forward; something that provokes challenges on the ear — that was always the goal, but after a few years spent not No Age-ing, just working on that thing called life, is it any wonder that Dean and Randy wanted to pump out some rock and roll for the black hole? Does time mean nothing to you? Don’t answer that. Snares Like a Haircut sounds like the good shit, and smells like the buzzy burning off of an aura, the marine layer suddenly vanished, leaving a thin layer of smog over the songs, simmering sock gazing tunes, revved and displacing enormous amounts of sound soil. This is pure driving music, for the bus racer and the car driver, with too many signs, bells and little lites flashing, ticking away. This is a record for the Foothill and the Valley, with a chemical sunset flowering at the end of every day. It’s a feeling made by driving music for driving music. Recorded in a few days and mixed forever, Snares Like a Haircut finds No Age in full on mode, because there was nothing else to do but go full on. In the songs inside the songs, the thumpy/thwappy drums, the desperately voiced paens to determination, the churning and the stinging-but-shiny fuck-it built into the structure, a promise from the 1980s echoes once again across today, for the undetermined in-between generation reality seekers. With Snares Like a Haircut, No Age scrub the itch in the little moments, engage actively with the process and carve/plaster/shave something in an album shape that’ll last. You don’t have to drive, but you can’t stay here. Let No Age do all the driving for you. Snares Like a Haircut.
With the world around us bruised and bloodied with teeth already dug into the concrete curb, we find ourselves with the shadow of a large boot looming overhead. What better time for No Age? Remember, they are the ones who first brought you the hospital-bed-feel-good-anthem, “Get Hurt” (2007). They know how to ecstatically rage and power on thru pain, because what else are you gonna do? The future belongs to the cockroaches, and this record is made for the disparate band of misfits who 2017 couldn’t kill. Yeah. New No Age! Not new age No Age (except for the odd “Sun Spots”/“Keechie”-style shimmer that only ever makes everything better), but definitely an age of album-making located somewhere beyond and back from where we last heard ’em in aught-13, when they’d wrapped their process in as much deconstruction as An Object could bear. Reimagined rippers, compelling ever forward; something that provokes challenges on the ear — that was always the goal, but after a few years spent not No Age-ing, just working on that thing called life, is it any wonder that Dean and Randy wanted to pump out some rock and roll for the black hole? Does time mean nothing to you? Don’t answer that. Snares Like a Haircut sounds like the good shit, and smells like the buzzy burning off of an aura, the marine layer suddenly vanished, leaving a thin layer of smog over the songs, simmering sock gazing tunes, revved and displacing enormous amounts of sound soil. This is pure driving music, for the bus racer and the car driver, with too many signs, bells and little lites flashing, ticking away. This is a record for the Foothill and the Valley, with a chemical sunset flowering at the end of every day. It’s a feeling made by driving music for driving music. Recorded in a few days and mixed forever, Snares Like a Haircut finds No Age in full on mode, because there was nothing else to do but go full on. In the songs inside the songs, the thumpy/thwappy drums, the desperately voiced paens to determination, the churning and the stinging-but-shiny fuck-it built into the structure, a promise from the 1980s echoes once again across today, for the undetermined in-between generation reality seekers. With Snares Like a Haircut, No Age scrub the itch in the little moments, engage actively with the process and carve/plaster/shave something in an album shape that’ll last. You don’t have to drive, but you can’t stay here. Let No Age do all the driving for you. Snares Like a Haircut.
Empath
"The Philadelphia noise rock group Empath are the sole act on Bandcamp who have tagged themselves as “gay ass rock.” That might come off as a glib self-descriptor, but it also does shed some light on the music. There’s a certain chaos animating plenty of contemporary queer music, from Car Seat Headrest’s fevered word salad to Xiu Xiu’s avant-pop eruptions. The sense that a song is about to overflow with its own feeling lines up with the sensation that queer people are breaking the status quo’s rules just by existing, by living and desiring and behaving outside strict heteronormative forms. Empath, for their part, make the kind of music that goes down like a dagger encrusted with rock candy.
The handful of tracks Empath have released so far have wrapped confectionary pop melodies in scratchy, corrosive production—and the band’s latest song “The Eye” is no exception. Taken from their new cassette release, Liberating Guilt and Fear, the track boasts the most compelling hook Empath have written to date, delivered via buried vocals over furious, pummeling drums. In the chorus, a single line stands out from the grit: “You don’t have to spend all of that money on me, baby.” It’s a strange fragment, singular enough to be memorable after the song’s over, but enigmatic enough to warrant a replay or two to dig up its context. The deadpan verses, crunchy guitars, and frantic synth lines drape like tinsel over the rest of the song, making “The Eye” an addictive listen, the kind that digs its teeth into you and doesn’t let go." -Pitchfork
"The Philadelphia noise rock group Empath are the sole act on Bandcamp who have tagged themselves as “gay ass rock.” That might come off as a glib self-descriptor, but it also does shed some light on the music. There’s a certain chaos animating plenty of contemporary queer music, from Car Seat Headrest’s fevered word salad to Xiu Xiu’s avant-pop eruptions. The sense that a song is about to overflow with its own feeling lines up with the sensation that queer people are breaking the status quo’s rules just by existing, by living and desiring and behaving outside strict heteronormative forms. Empath, for their part, make the kind of music that goes down like a dagger encrusted with rock candy.
The handful of tracks Empath have released so far have wrapped confectionary pop melodies in scratchy, corrosive production—and the band’s latest song “The Eye” is no exception. Taken from their new cassette release, Liberating Guilt and Fear, the track boasts the most compelling hook Empath have written to date, delivered via buried vocals over furious, pummeling drums. In the chorus, a single line stands out from the grit: “You don’t have to spend all of that money on me, baby.” It’s a strange fragment, singular enough to be memorable after the song’s over, but enigmatic enough to warrant a replay or two to dig up its context. The deadpan verses, crunchy guitars, and frantic synth lines drape like tinsel over the rest of the song, making “The Eye” an addictive listen, the kind that digs its teeth into you and doesn’t let go." -Pitchfork