Goons Be Gone

Since beginning in late 2005, albums from L.A. duo No Age have been defined by where they fell in the balance between the groups straightforward hooky punk and their more experimental tendencies. When guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt find the sweet spot between blurry ambient abstraction and spartan songwriting, it generally results in No Ages most captivating material. After spending about a decade pushing their sound to extremes of both fuzzy pop and impenetrable noise, the bands 2018 album Snares Like a Haircut found them returning to the roots of their sound by running some of their most carefully constructed songs through waves of dreamy atmospheric samples. The record felt like a refinement of their earliest euphoric hardcore, and a dialing down of some of their more extreme forays into artsy weirdness. Fifth album Goons Be Gone continues the maturation that began on Snares Like a Haircut, but this time around Randall and Spunt draw clearer lines between their various approaches. Relatively spare songs like Feeler, Sandalwood, and War Dance blast by energetically. The vocals are clear and unaffected while anxious drumming and multi-tracked guitar riffs egg each other on to go faster and push the songs further into the red. Turned to String coasts along like a punked-up Neu, monotonous drums and minimal chord changes gelling into a fast-but-hypnotic repetition. When not zooming by at full force, No Age explore rainy, melancholic layers of processed guitars and ambient samples on the moody Smoothie, waves of fuzz and buried rhythms on Toes in the Water, and glitchy randomized samples on Working Stiff Takes a Break. In some ways, Goons Be Gone is constructed in the same manner as the bands early singles collection Weirdo Rippers, with stretches of formlessness opening up into exciting and immediate songs. The flow is less consistent than its been on recent albums, but the contrast this provides takes the edge off of the more out-there segments and also gives the more traditional rockers more impact. With a number of years under their belts, No Ages songwriting and experimentation have both reached new heights of craft. Goons Be Gone isnt the perfect synthesis of chaos and control that No Age have been searching for their entire career, but it finds some of their best songs and most fruitful experiments presented in a style thats never sounded more singularly their own. ~ Fred Thomas

ハードコアやグランジのみならず、立体的な音響やコラージュをはじめとする実験的なサウンドも楽しませながら、冗長にならないのは根っこにパンク・ロックがあるからか。LAのアンダーグラウンド・シーンの息吹を伝えるギター&ドラム・デュオがドラッグ・シティからリリースした5枚目のアルバム。進化の証だった枝葉も含め、とことん無駄を削ぎ落した全11曲33分の中に彼らの最良の部分が凝縮されている。
bounce (C)山口智男