No Age: An Object (Live)

No Age descended on North London last week to showcase their new album, “An Object”. The LA two piece were originally scheduled to play at Koko but the gig was downsized to the school hall-esque Dome in Tufnell Park. This is definitely a band on the way down. The new album, unlike its predecessors, has received little hype and a fair amount of criticism. I think a lot of the criticism is over the top, but the live performance doesn’t exactly help my point. There’s no energy in any of the new stuff, and there is a lot of uninspiring shoegazey bollocks.

The lack of drums on a lot of tracks takes all momentum out of the songs in the live arena and, perhaps even more importantly, Dean Spunt cannot sing for shit. That’s all fine when you’re belting out noisey punk classics, but without the raw energy it just doesn’t fit. Luckily, they still brought out some of the noisey punk classics. “Eraser” and “Teen Creeps” were met with rapturous approval by a suddenly energetic crowd and old favourite “Boy Void” went down a treat too.

The undoubted highlight of the night for me was a storming performance of “Fever Dreaming” that left me almost dead (freshers' flu and energetic gig going are not compatible) but damn happy about it. No Age definitely still have the ability to entertain live, it’s just a shame they don’t write the songs to do it any more.