The newest release from the long-running, Los Angeles-based noise rock duo No Age has been percolating for a while and marks the first time the pair recorded and produced themselves without outside support.
The players, Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt, started recording People Helping People pre-pandemic but when the world shut down they lost their studio and had to sequester in Randall’s garage to complete the full length. Having made their bones on cracking noise experiments with muscle, the attitude and temperature have been turned noticeably down, with more pleasant soundscapes and much less antagonizing/aggressive offerings; a sleepy, drifting vibe permeates People Helping People.
The A side of the album shifts between brief instrumentals and minimalist song structures with various levels of engagement. The best of the instrumentals is the opening “You’re Cooked” which uses organ, ominous bass fills, shaking percussion, building to a soothing outro, and the blissfully swelling “Heavenly”. Other instrumental efforts like the swirling “Interdependence”, the repetitive new aged “Blueberry Barefoot” and the lightly screeching “Fruit Bat Blunder” are fine fragments but don’t offer much to latch onto.
The band looks to The Velvet Underground on tracks like the pulsing, spoken word of “Compact Flashes” and the lo-fi “Violence” which lacks any energy associated with the title. The group seems to be more locked into song structure and delivering the goods on three efforts, “Rush To The Pond”, “Slow Motion Shadow” and “Tripped Out Before Scott”. However, while each of these tracks has potential, they all suffer from directly muted production, intentionally scaling back the songs to restrict the energy, dampen the mood, and disengage.
Clearly, the group put time and effort into production (the dance/electro “Flutter Freer” and vibrating “Andy Helping Andy” both sound alive) but made an artistic choice to neuter their more rock efforts. Had the instrumentals been more invigorating this may have been an interesting choice, but as People Helping People wraps, the feeling of No Age just going through the disenchanted motions sets in.
