FatCat brings us this killer debut from the LA skate/art/punk underworld. Featuring Dean Spunt and Randy Randall, two-thirds of the insanely great Wives, No Age's noisy, skewed art-pop merges proto-punk with gauzy, lo-fi shoegaze aesthetics, at times delivered with a sonic abandon that could have come straight out of the RISD scene. A highly impressive debut!

Not too long ago, Dean Spunt and Randy Randall were two-thirds of the insanely great (and ridiculously unheralded) LA art-punk band Wives. Emerging from the same all ages scene that also brought us folks like the Mae Shi, 400 Blows, and Mika Miko, Wives managed to uncork a couple of sweet seven inches and one album worth of ferocious, insightful, vintage Southern California-inspired (think early Black Flag and the Minutemen) hardcore before imploding. Though Spunt and Randall's new band No Age doesn't quite mine the exact territory as Wives, these two have seen fit to keep that same unbridled spirit fully intact, only now opening up their sound equally to noisier passages and more overt pop songcraft.

No Age made their recorded debut a few months back with five singles released simultaneously on a whole bunch of different labels. For those not inclined to track down those slabs of wax, Fat Cat has come to the rescue with Weirdo Rippers, an eleven-track collection that cherry picks the highlights of those singles. Beginning with the potent guitar swells of "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy," No Age segue from the effuse, atmospheric noise of tracks like "I Wanna Sleep" and "Sun Spots" to the taut frenzy of "Boy Void" with reckless ease. Better still are the moments when the band manages to pull their punk thrash and heady dream pop into wholly cohesive bursts of manic grandeur, as on the by-turns delirious and propulsive "My Life's Alright Without You" and the positively shimmering "Loosen This Job." At times striking like a more light-hearted Black Dice with a knack for hooks, or a distinctly less punishing Lightning Bolt, No Age's Weirdo Rippers is one of the more impressive debuts I've heard in quite some time. [MC] (July 10, 2007)