No Age "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy"
For a three minute and forty second track, this one really takes its sweet ass time. L.A.'s avant-punk darlings No Age sequence Weirdo Rippers, their singles compilation/Fat Cat Records debut, to begin with two minutes and ten seconds of waves crashing on the shore. I don't mean that in a pretentious, "waves of distortion crashing on the beach of rawk" sort of way either. Actual waves, actual shore. Okay, there's some ambient guitar fuzz in the background, so no one will mistake this for a masseuse's mood music.
Two minutes of pretty stasis isn't really enough time to lose interest, but when the spry Pavement on Drag City guitar line finally breaks in, your head snaps to attention like you just nodded off in Algebra class anyway. That wiry hook turns out to be a head-fake as well, supplanted by the shouted vocals and white noise that close down the final minute in delirious fashion. Some pretty keen use of anticipation and release, in a very unconventional song structure, from an uncommonly interesting new band.