Show Review: No Age @ Red 7 (1/11)
At first, I was looking forward to an outdoor show at Mohawk in January. Then the forecast kept getting colder and colder. I wasn’t worried as being near the stage for pics meant carry over heat from the pit. Instead, promoters moved the show to Red7. The openers had issues, the speakers were giving up, but No Age killed. Follow the jump for more.
I realized in my last review that my show karma for 2010 was strong; very few duds, lots of surprises. Going into the New Year, I knew the streak couldn’t last and being the first show of the year after the holiday respite, I expected some rust. I got some.
The opening band was Total Abuse. It was loud. It was angry. It was a little off. The right side of the PA was failing every few verses and that derailed my opportunity to get into the straight up angry vibe they offered the crowd. A few in the crowd up close were down, others went about their business of consuming $3 Tecates and challenging each other’s Indie music trivia knowledge. Wedge these guys into a hardcore line-up and I’d be good with it.
And now for something completely different…
Rene Hell took to the stage, a projector throwing images on to the stage leaving a solo shadow outline on the backdrop. Moody noise filled the room as samplers, sequencers and tones created beats. I am a sucker for “electronica” or IDM or whatever it is you call it now and I desperately wanted it to work. And when things were good, it was good, but again, Gremlins took hold of the PA system with channels dropping and few complete stops. Having seen Ulrich Schnauss at SxSW, Orbital many years ago, seeing an artist build a song in front of you, you get a true sense what things are supposed to be like. Instead, it was a frustrating, shortened, set for Jeff Witscher’s latest project. But if it tells you anything, I am listening to his album as I type this, stream it here.
No Age strolled up after a short set up and brief delay. The projector stayed operational providing the lighting as Randy and Dean took to the stage with an extra guy (William Kai Stangeland-Menchaca) to fill out the live sound taking on synth duties. The song “Life Prowler” ended the atmospheric noise during their entrance with power. And then the gremlins struck again. Right side speakers dropped out a few times, vocals and drums were low. It didn’t matter to me, I was close enough to the stage to hear the monitors, but knew the natives would be restless.
Five songs in, a brief break to alleviate technical issues allowed the first clean song of the evening to be “Fever Dreaming”. This is a favorite of mine from the new album, so good timing. The projector was now showing video of the stage in a 60’s psychedelic manner, weaving in random images here and there, sometimes just noise. Songs would continue weaving in and out of the new stuff, PA system stabilizing to allow for the crowd to get into it. The youngest and bravest members up front even got in a bit of crowd-surfing. I made my way around to the other side of the stage and spent some time in the back of the room to take it in. “Common Heat” was next song that stuck in my head. Strong musically, it was a solid performance.
“Glitter” and “Eraser” gave me the live music buzz I had missed during the off season. “Shed and Transcend” rounded out the new offerings as the band headed into “Miner” to complete the set. An exitless encore was comprised of “Boy Void” and a Black Flag cover, “Six Pack”. That was cool, no other way to describe it. The full set list is posted below; Randy was nice enough to take the time to scribble it down after the stage lists were snatched by fans before I could snap pics. Super cool thing to do, so thanks…
A bit of a shaky start to 2011, but the first show finished well…
More fancy photos can be seen on Mr. Brian Gray’s website.