No Age – The Ché Café, San Diego 07/01/11

The Ché Café is essentially a shantytown. Old and creaky, swimming underneath several layers of graffiti and murals – it sprawls out into a secluded grotto, complete with vegan buffet – and squeezes into a limited floorspace. The people, a specific crop of San Diego’s eccentrics and hipsters mill about like they own the place – a virtual halloweentown, guided by moonlight and spliff smoke. Sometimes there’s a few taking tickets, sometimes there’s not, for a band as independently successful as No Age, a whopping two people sat rigidly behind a table and computer at the front of the venue. Nobody was getting through without paying; this was their marquee show, the lineup that would keep the aggressively DIY club afloat for the rest of the month. For a space like the Ché, bands like No Age are a godsend – not fazed by their rampant popularity – they stick to the indie circuit, making a business that usually attracts anywhere from ten to thirty people a show a whole lot of money in one night.

But No Age are ideal scene heroes, their fierce energy, enthusiastic interviews, their call-to-arms political bent, the fact that the cover of their first record lovingly featured their Los Angeles mothership The Smell, it all makes them come off as two incredibly sincere dudes. Their adherence to the scene isn’t for image or credibility, it’s out of a palpable love for underground rock. “We’re here because this is where the interesting things happen” said guitarist Randy Randall before the show. He’s right, in the big moments kids would reach up and grab the low-hanging rafters, twist their legs around and hang down monkey-bars style, with no security to tear them down. When drummer Dean Spunt asked for water, a half bottle was passed all the way from the back of the room to his kit, which he drank from gleefully before sending the bottle back the other way. These are events – adventures in happenstance – are lost on the rock club and permitted only in the purity and genesis of the very concept of indie rock.

As for the set is was pure No Age; incendiary guitar blasts, machine-gun drums, and ashen noise loops – Spunt’s voice transforming from a clouded howl on record to a cutting bark – and as usual the songs smudged together in a punkish plaster. But that didn’t really matter, because No Age is one of the few bands with a gift of making their audience feel absolutely adored. “Support the Ché!” roared Spunt a number of times throughout the night, destroying the hierarchy between fan and band. It’s not the songs that make a No Age gig great, it’s the spirit.