Snares Like a Haircut

It's art with a beat, noise with hooks, and more proof that No Age are one of the great slept-on bands of their generation.

It’s what you should put on when you don’t want to think; aggressive, enveloping, and with just enough of a bite to corroborate your deeply held belief that you’re not one of them.

Snares Like A Haircut finds Dean Spunt and Randy Randall making a warm, self-assured reunion, with each other and that scene-leading musical style.

After 40 minutes you’re still not totally sure what it is you’ve listened to. This could be great, messy pop music, or just as easily be something you dreamt, dozing in post-coital bliss with a detuned radio in the background. Whichever it is, you’ll just be glad it exists. If, that is, it exists at all.

Their call-and-response breakdowns are still as impassioned as ever on tracks like Drippy and Cruise Control, where they place the hooks and melodies right on the surface. The use of ambiance over their riotous songs isn’t just an asset, it’s also the essence of No Age.

They artfully balance soaring interference-cloaked anthems with dreamier My Bloody-style FX investigations. [Mar 2018, p.113]

The result is a strong collection of the sort of rock songs at which No Age excels: swiftly paced, inventively layered and riffy, simultaneously caustic and gauzy.

No Age’s name seems self-actualizing. And in their psycho-candied sound, which has progressively gotten better, they still know how to locate the timeless, fever-pitched feeling of a beginning.

Time away hasn’t dulled No Age’s musical sword--they’re sharper and brighter than ever.

Besides restoring the muscle lacking on the emaciated An Object, the opening trio on Snares presents No Age as everything they’ve been (gritty, propulsive, atmospheric, a motorcycle taking on a sandstorm head-on) and the immediately accessible rawk band they’ve never been.

At their peak, and not infrequently on Snares Like a Haircut they’re within touching distance, No Age are one of the most thrilling rock bands on this planet.

This is noticeably a slightly older, wiser o Age, one aware that the rigours of the age demand a little more than good-times positivity. Certainly, they've seldom sounded better. [Feb 2018, p.22]

Be it a preemptive rebuke or not, Snares Like a Haircut is assured on its own terms, showing No Age comfortable with music for its own sake.

Snares feels more like No Age's greatest hits than their fifth album. [Feb 2018, p.95]

There's real gratification for the fan when an album finds a balance held by intact identity and expansion of the dimension in which it resides. Snares Like a Haircut achieves this by introducing an almost shoegaze sensibility to their galvanic art punk. The refreshing assortment is evidence that in this territory, No Age have no equal.

It’s a solid rock album whose dedication to artisanal noise in some ways negates its ancestry of majestic rock & roll that begs to be heard publicly.