The clashes in sound become the very skeletons for the songs, and the songwriting is more fearless and honest than ever before, marking a distinct maturity for No Age and resulting in their best work to date.
This time round, we get songs that are structured like collages, a more thoughtful approach to lyricism and percussion made from coins bouncing up and down in a bass speaker. It still sounds like no-one else but No Age, but… refreshed, somehow.
Just because you’ll need a microscope to find these songs doesn’t mean they aren’t there, crushing the competition more quietly than ever.
An Object demonstrates that No Age is willing to change their narrative, and do so in the same unpremeditated manner without disrupting their established parameters of noise.
Shifts from forceful old-school punk to abstract, heady noise all remain, but on fourth album ‘An Object’ there’s a clear self-awareness, a belief that something’s gotta give.
On the whole, An Object is all about stripping things back, which ensures that the album is never anything less than fascinating.
This is fault-line rock that augments its political force with eclecticism, designed to displace complacency. What’s more, on ‘An Object’, their blissy ambient tinkerings finally feel earned and essential.
No Age may not have delivered another knockout, but An Object compensates for its shortcomings by being a mature and often moving album, a first for the duo.
An Object is No Age’s most experimental work to date, but easily their most bare. The songs are half-filled ideas, and lyrically far less narrative-driven than the band’s strong history of dream-punk ditties.
Is it as good as their previous stuff? Answer: just about. It’s a difficult album and requires repeated listening for some of the subtler parts to sink in.
Now they’re less direct and outright punk in their approach, this is an album that feels as if it could have come straight from the early days of post-punk.
By retreating from both aggressively cacophonic clamor and catchy hooks, however, An Object weakens the dichotomy that makes No Age’s music a compelling standout in the genre.
Their sound had its expansion and now it's time to retract a little, to lean toward some of those punk roots rather than reveling in all that blissful guitar/noise wash.
As a musical document more utile and enjoyable as a conversation piece than for its intended purpose of listening, An Object sadly lives up to its own name.
On An Object, No Age push their weakest attributes firmly into the spotlight; a move indirectly admirable for its continued ambition, but one which makes you wish they’d go back to being punk rock, rather than just punk.
Most of the music is fiercely restrained, characterized by short songs, skeletal atmospheres, and performances that have a mechanistic, flatlined intensity. Bad? No, but stiff, and sapped of the dynamism the twosome seemed to come by so naturally in the past.
The album veers wildly between tracks that determinedly resist the temptation to rock out, and end up feeling disengaged - a first for this band - and others that consist of little more than fairly rudimentary thrashing.
One of the most disapointing albums i have heard. I loved their two albums before this but this one is unispired to the max. They seem to pull from classic punk more but the production is so washed out it pales in comparison to their last two LPs
1 | No Ground 2:31 | |
2 | I Won't Be Your Generator 3:18 | |
3 | C'mon, Stimmung 3:14 | |
4 | Defector / Ed 3:04 | |
5 | An Impression 2:30 | |
6 | Lock Box 2:05 | |
7 | Running From a-Go-Go 3:04 | |
8 | My Hands, Birch and Steel 0:56 | |
9 | Circling With Dizzy 2:20 | |
10 | A Ceiling Dreams of a Floor 2:35 | |
11 | Commerce, Comment, Commence 4:03 |
#92 | / | Crack Magazine |