LIVE: No Age Wastes No Time at 30 Days in LA Set at the Echo (11/18/2015)

Events

Day eighteen of Red Bull Sound Select’s 30 Days in Los Angeles speeds into punk territory with a fiery show led by No Age.

Words: Kurt Orzeck

photo by Catie Laffoon / Red Bull Sound Select Content Pool

November 19, 2015

No Age performs at Red Bull Sound Select Presents 30 Days in LA, at The Echo, in Los Angeles, CA, USA on 18 November, 2015. // Catie Laffoon / Red Bull Sound Select / Content Pool // P-20151119-00225 // Usage for editorial use only // Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information. //

No Age
with In The Whale and So Pitted
November 18, 2015
The Echo
Los Angeles, California

No Age kicked Red Bull Sound Select’s 30 Days in Los Angeles series into high gear on Wednesday night, barreling through a barrage of fast-paced songs spanning their ten-year career. Guitarist Randy Randall—his face hidden beneath a mop of stringy hair—and drummer/singer Dean Allen Spunt hustled through a set that they admitted was brief even by their standards. Spunt likened it to driving on a freeway with no traffic, inadvertently alluding to this year’s 30 Days poster-art motif.

But while No Age’s set ran just shy of 55 minutes, concertgoers got their money’s worth thanks to chunky thirty-minute sets by the two opening acts, as well as a few treats for early arrivers: free pizza slices from local joint Two Boots, LACMA gift card envelopes with testimonials from Randall and Spunt, free drinks, and prizes that included Crap sunglasses, Richer Poorer socks, and ear buds.

First opener So Pitted—a Seattle trio whose signing to Sub Pop was just announced last week—started the evening on a noisy, experimental note. Nathan Rodriguez put down his feedback-squealing guitar mid-song to dance a jig and mohawked drummer Liam Downey toyed with the cameramen in the front row, calling them cyborgs.

So Pitted’s set called to mind Metz, Minutemen, Big Black, Pere Ubu, and Nirvana at their wildest, leading Eric Riley—drummer for In the Whale—to declare such an original band a tough act to follow. But he and bandmate Nate Valdez turned the energy level up a few notches, with Riley even belting out a death-metal scream or two as Valdez dabbled with some guitar histrionics. It was an appropriate match for the night’s headliners: No Age’s Randall and Spunt produced the group’s debut single, “Neighbor”/”Pray for the Prey”.

Both members of In the Whale, from Chicago, regularly chastised the “hipster fucks” in the crowd for not letting loose. But instead of rebelling against those fighting words, the audience actually stepped it up, bouncing through the second half of the duo’s Oxes-meet-Local H set. It was a display that proved LA’s indie-rock set can be just as enthusiastic as any other niche in this famously diverse city. FL