Yes, this L.A. duo is just guitar and drums, but No Age sounds anything but minimal. Everything from Dinosaur Jr.'s guitar overloads to Brian Eno's pastoral drones crops up in songs like "Miner" and "Things I Did When I Was Dead," sometimes all at once. The overtones on "Cappo" and "Sleeper Hold" mask the band's pop instincts, while "Impossible Bouquet" is ambient music that doesn't drift off into the ether but envelopes you like a creeping fog. If there's a downside to the amorphousness of even No Age's most direct songs, it's that the lyrics are sometimes lost in the haze of beautiful noise. But, honestly, any excuse to lean closer and relish such a subtly novel racket is a good one. It's rousing, wild, experimental rock music where what's going on between the lines, as it were, is often as or more interesting than the melodies and riffs themselves.

-- Joshua Klein