Three albums on, No Age continue to tinker with their sound. Drawing on everything from 90’s noise acts to spiny protopunk, their initial abrasiveness has been reworked into textures that support as many melodic turns as can be expected from a noise-punk group. Everything In Between teaser “Glitter” continues to slough away the unnecessary turbulence and meshes the core of their sound with a new level of accessibility. Punk rarely sounds this organic; lo-fi dissonance is smeared about, but now it compliments the bare bones orchestration and functions as an instrument as much as anything else in the arrangement.
But for all the sputtering chaos, “Glitter” is quite musically meticulous. The creaky guitar hits like jagged pangs, rigid drums add a stubborn trajectory for the free-flowing maelstrom, and once you peel back the layers there’s a subtle earworm that lingers. Dean Spunt sings with quiet detachment, as if he’s trying to get you disregard the delivery and hear the words like you were reading them. No Age appear to be showing some restraint, and it’s all unexpectedly complementary.
