Matt Perpetua, over at Fluxblog, reacting to this:
Some people are very excited about No Age's new album Nouns, and for the most part, they are All The Right People. This complicates things, mainly because I don't think No Age is a fully-formed band at this moment in time, and I worry that they might get screwed over/screwed up by Certain People overrating their juvenilia, whether it's out of genuine enthusiasm, or because it is beneficial to Those People's brand. This rarely works out -- either the artist hedges their bets, and feels no need to progress, or they develop their skill and create better material, and the audience moves on to smothering some other inexperienced band.I have to admit that I am utterly mystified by the hermetic indie hype-cycle wherein favorable blog mentions + festival appearances/sold-out club shows + selling 75-100K records = incredible, overwhelming pressure. Frankly, the internet "insta-band" effect is a relatively new one anyway: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Black Kids, and Vampire Weekend are the prime examples I can think of - everyone ignored CYHSY's decent-to-good second album, Black Kids haven't had a first album, and Vampire Weekend released theirs a scant three months ago. Only Black Kids' hype-cycle strikes me as particularly obscene, as Pitchfork (usually the main culprit when someone refers to "Certain People"; on No Age they got an assist from Sasha Frere-Jones) elected to award the coveted Best New Music designation to their Myspace page, basically. As for whether or not No Age is "fully-formed," I leave it to you to assign what value you will to what I perceive to be the rockist notion of "paying dues"; I'm more of a "stack paper while you can" kind of guy, especially in this economy. At any rate, it's not like No Age are Nirvana post-10,000,000 selling major-label debut blow up or anything: if all it takes to retard their development and fuck them into a cocked hat is an afternoon slot at the Pitchfork Music Festival, then might I suggest that they hire the little pig that built his house of bricks to produce their next album.
