No Age at the Grand Social, Dublin on Saturday 5th of October 2013

No Age are a band that have been bubbling under the surface for a while. Their second album ‘Nouns’ was their first brush with popularity in these shores in 2008. The LA duo celebrated that success with a sold out Whelan’s show with Times New Viking and Los Campesinos. They were back over here in 2010 with a follow up, ‘Everything in Between’, to support. And the 2013 show, surprise surprise, comes on the back of another new album.

While neither ‘An Object’ or its predecessor were anything to get too excited about, their show in The Grand Social on Saturday still drew a healthy crowd. Up first though were veteran Dubliners Dudley Corporation. They too have failed to reach previous heights – indeed songs from 2003’s ‘In Love with the Dudley Corporation’ still sound the freshest in the set – though they still serve as a tasty and fitting appetiser to the headliners.

When guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt take to the stage, the excitement gets turned up a notch. The crowd, mostly men in their mid to late 20s shuffle forward to the stage.

That means standing under the speakers though, and when No Age get going, they are loud. After a quick intro, they crack into Circling with Dizzy, and it’s the Loud Noise Rock that everyone was expecting. Allen Spunt pounds away on the drums while Randall looks down through his long blond hair at his guitar and effects pedals.

And while he has more pedals than your average bike shop, the sounds that they make aren’t hugely different. The guitar sounds switch from one loud, feedback-heavy drone to another. It’s not about subtlety and neither are the lyrics.

Trying to discern the meaning of Allen Spunt’s lyrics live is like going to mass on a Christmas morning and deciding who is there for spirituality and who is there for duty; you can catch a few words in the mumbled drone but you can’t pick up any feeling in them.

While these may seem like quibbles about the show, they are anything but. This is what the crowd signed up for with a No Age show. It’s punk for the quarter life crisis. It’s the sort of teenage rebellion that the crowd wish they had ten years ago when they were still teenagers. More than anything else, it’s a lot of fun.

The duo play with a constant smile on their faces as they jump into songs spanning their history, from Brett Schulz Himself to Glitter to Teen Creep. They both step down from the stage to play among the crowd who are more twitching excitedly than fully letting loose.

They have banter between themselves – including advocating bananas as a touring food – and with the crowd. “Is Aer Lingus still around? That used to be great airline,” Allen Spunt says being a little bit more insightful than he may have expected. “You could get into the UK without having to clear immigration again.”

The two skinny guys with scraggly, long hair in sweaty t-shirts and jeans are doing all that’s asked of them. They play with energy, enthusiasm and a sense of fun. Sometimes that’s all you need. They offer a deafening sweat to the crowd and they lap it up. It would be hard not to.