Nouns is the new No Age album out on the not so Sub Pop record label. for starters any band who was going to follow up an album like Weirdo Rippers is going to have a fucking tough time and Nouns is unsurprisingly not as good. but it's not just that it's the next album after a really good one, the jams on Nouns gets bogged down in sort of Pop song structure. i feel like Weirdo Rippers did a bit of the same thing but with that album there was more to a song than just a song. almost all of them had some noodling going on before a jam was broken into and even if they didn't they could pull off straight forwardness in clever enough ways ("Everybody's Down"(which i think is the bro anthem of my generation)). Nouns has several tracks that are just straight forward rock songs. this works in the case of the single "Eraser". but in alot of the songs they seem to overstay their welcome and you get end up getting too close to getting sick of the riffs and in some cases do.
the album is not without goodness though. alot of the jams, even if they are pretty accesible aren't bad ones like the opener "Miner". and they still have a few cuts that are sans lyrics and rock band style, "Keechie" and "Impossible Bouquet", the latter being similiar sounding to a Sung Tongs era Animal Collective jam without being as long. also, "Things I did when I was dead" has a very Animal Collective feel via delayed out guitar and rythmic noise keeping a beat. while it's a good song, it also bums me out and makes me wonder if all bands that are sort of weird and good when no one has heard them will sound like Animal Collective when they get famous, like Animal Collective for instance.
i didn't buy this album and i'd recommend not if you can get around it. it's not awful but it's not great either. if you are new to No Age alltogether buy Weirdo Rippers (obviously) or any of the 7"s it was compiled from.
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this album is like 2 years old but if you can get your hands on FOR THE GREAT SLAVE LAKES by Mouthus you really fucking should. this band is killer first of all and this album is one of the best by them i've ever heard. it's pretty cut and dry as far as this band goes with the drummer on a full set but without rock beats and the guitarist busting heavy, simple riffs that don't sound like riffs and singing over masses of delay. it's not experimental with pop sensibilities but it's pretty fucking good.
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On the ride home from picking Tyler and Katie up I was pretty quiet because all the coffee I drank at Denny's (I know I swore I'd never go into another diner-chain again, but you understand considering the circumstances) fucked up my stomach pretty bad and also because I was enjoying listening to all their travel tales, but Laurie asked how I was doing and I said "not sad" and Tyler asked what I was being "not sad" about and we told him it was because you had left and he asked if I was into noise music and if I read your blog and that made me laugh.
kbye.
GASP! Mainstream media disagrees!
Weirdo Rippers is really good and I'm kinda staying willfully ignorant. I don't need to know about good bands becoming less good, right?
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