Weirdo Rippers

No Age's Weirdo Rippers opens with "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy," a perfect example of the band's very Californian kind of avant noise pop: it coasts in on static that sounds like crashing surf and guitars that drift in with the tide, then kicks into gear with a harshly pretty melody so bright that it glares like midday sun on the sidewalk. Later on, "Neck Escaper" sounds a little like a lost track from Pet Sounds, weathered from being left out on the beach for 40 years. The L.A. gallery punks' early singles find them working within a palette of different kinds of noise, whether it's the blade-like shards of it that slice through "Escarpment," the stuttering, splattering blasts that push "Loosen This Job" forward, or the aptly named "Sun Spots"' waves of distortion, which undulate like heat shimmer. There are a lot of layers to No Age's music on Weirdo Rippers, both literally -- especially on "I Wanna Sleep," where piles of hazy feedback coalesce into drums and chanted vocals that are equally dreamy and wild -- and figuratively: Dean Spunt and Randy Randall list Squeeze, Husker Du, and contemporary painters among their influences, and even when their music is bold, it's rarely simple. No Age are just as likely to thrash out on "Boy Void" as they are to engulf listeners in an abstract wash of sound like the oddly poignant "Semi-Sorted." However, it's when the band splits the difference, as on "My Life's Alright Without You," which intersperses a breezy melody with passages of raw noise, that No Age are most compelling. Their collision of noise, punk, and pop could be contradictory -- and on songs like "Dead Plane," which begins as a roiling cloud of guitar textures, then unfolds into what sounds like a Ramones cover band playing underwater, it's certainly fragmented. Though they focused this mischievous, mysterious allure on Nouns, Weirdo Rippers represents No Age's creativity at its most freewheeling. ~ Heather Phares