Welcome / No Age's Latest

Hello.
Welcome to the 8-Tracks Fierce Blog. 8-Tracks Fierce is a monthly music podcast I started in 2009 featuring new tracks by underground rock artists. It's an atypical show because I almost never play a full track, and I talk about the song and the artist while it's playing (not the whole time—just part of it). That way I can get eight tracks into a half-hour show and just give the listener a taste of what that artist is doing. 


The show went on a long hiatus last October, and I've finally decided to bring it back in January 2011. I would do it sooner, but my wife and I just moved from New York to Ohio and we're about to move into our first house and have not one, but two babies. So I need some time for things to settle down. Even though there have only been five episodes and there hasn't been a new one for nearly a year, 8-Tracks Fierce is somehow ranked #23 in the alternative music category on PodOmatic, a leading podcast distributor on the Web. I hope to move it up in the ranks quickly next year.


The show will have mostly the same format when it returns, but the content will be a little tighter. For previous episodes I would desperately look for albums that had come out in the past year, and I wasn't that smart about it. I've now found ways to get newer content so I can bring you the freshest music, and I'm going to narrow the genres down to a certain...aesthetic. No more mellow or folky music just to get more listeners. Just the most interesting and exciting noisy, punky, psychy indie and alternative rock I can find.


Another thing that will change, as you can see, is that there will be an associated blog. This is just to give the show more of a "home" on the Web and to share a little more content here and there. In today's case, I wanted to talk about No Age's new album, which is slated to be released next week. Thanks to some really awful people in Internet land, I've had it for weeks already. Thanks, awful people!


No Age - Everything In Between (9/28/2010; Sub Pop Records)

I saw No Age, a duo who plays noisy, creative punk rock, here in Columbus last week, opening for Pavement. They made Pavement look like wussies. Their new album, the third of their full-length efforts, continues their vibe but in a slightly new direction that's difficult to describe. I'm sure many reviewers have done a good job of writing about it already, and there will be much more next week. Suffice it to say that I recommend this album if you like noise and creativity. No Age abounds with both. Even though they're communist hippies.


The first single from the album is track 2, "Glitter", but if I were doing an episode of 8-Tracks Fierce this month, I would definitely play track 12, "Shred and Transcend". I like to find those little nuggets of goodness for you. Here they are playing it last May at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. Oh yeah, they've added a keyboard/sampler/noisemaker guy to their live act, and I definitely approve. Not sure if he's an official member of the band, but he looks it if you see them live and don't know anything about them.

No Age - "Shred and Transcend" (May 2010; Primavera Sound Festival; Barcelona)

Download (not my link)

No Age on Blogspot