No Age: Everything in Between (2010)

(Sub Pop)

!! CAUTION !!

That yellow warning print is probably not deserved, but I find this record frustrating enough that it seemed appropriate.

There's apathy and there's apathy. There's Pavement and there's this. There's awkwardly wailing above a beautiful din and there's painfully whining over an anonymous wall. There may be a glitch in the punk rock fan who can't see the good in this, the same issue I have with virtually all metal, but it's not impossible for it to come off as terrible. Perhaps some of us have become overly accustomed to a modern understanding of punk that verges on pure pop.

It's tempting to think of Wire when confronted with Everything in Between, which amounts to art-skate music the way Pink Flag amounted to an art-rock renovation of punk itself. That's one of many elements of No Age's new album that are great. To boot, who isn't all for bouncing beats and trashy guitars and minimal evolution past the core? We all love low-fidelity noisemaking and the hard hit of a beyond-basic band setup. But there is also something to be said for the universal impact of precision and clarity, and -- if the record's not meant to encompass either -- barring that, beauty to our beloved muddiness.

The songs on this record squeal and fade for a nonstop half hour without much of a direct hit. The set of influences and aesthetic purposes seems all mismatched and flipped around; these songs that would sound so convincing with a more varied sonic approach, and this compelling, terse sound that is too massive to properly fit these songs. There is no reason to doubt that the adolescent anthems here are as secretly eloquent as has been reported. The way in is just damned hard to find.