No Age is

currently riding high as the darling of the L.A. underground, but it wasn’t so many

months ago that the noise-pop duo felt a sense of victory simply from being able to

release music.

"Our scheme was to release five different EPs, on five different labels, in five

different parts of the world — vinyl-only, of course," singer-guitarist Randy

Randall says. "Could we actually pull that off? We spent all this time designing

record covers, getting things ready, and did it. We thought, ‘This is it. We’ve

infiltrated.’ We go the feeling we slipped in through the back door."

Songs from those EPs were culled to make up No Age’s debut album, "Weirdo

Rippers," which set the blog world abuzz and earned plaudits from Pitchfor

k. Not long afterward, Randall and drummer Dean Spunt were signed to Sub Pop, for

whom they already have five songs recorded for a follow-up album. "That was a

complete surprise," Randall says. "Somebody told us they had heard our music

and seen us live."

What they heard is spastic pop blasted by Randall’s distortion-fed guitar and Spunt’s

punk rhythms and punctuated by fleeting bursts of beauty — gorgeous chord progressions

or melodies that are gone before they have the chance to get stuck in your head.

"Our goal is to write great pop songs like Squeeze or the Ramones, but do it in

a way that makes sense to ourselves," Randall says. "We do have the

avant-garde noise aggression of a Screeching Weasel … but it’s like we only want to

write the good parts. If it goes on too long …"

No Age’s experimental

approach, first heard when Randall and Spunt were members of the band Wives, earned them

a faithful following among the sonically adventurous patrons of the downtown venue the Smell, an all-ages, volunteer-run

room where the volume and — thanks to bands such as Anavan, Health and Abe Vigoda —

the sense of daring are always high.

"It’s a funny thing," Randall

says of having graduated to larger venues, "no place feels too big. It’s like we

always have our friends with us. Wherever we go, we just bring the Smell with

us."

||| No Age opens for Battles on

Tuesday at the Music Box @ Fonda.

||| Download: "My Life’s Alright Without

You."

Photo by Jennifer Clavin

Monday, Oct.

29

Tegan & Sara and Northern State play the Orpheum (it’s

sold out); Queens of the Stone Age play the Nokia (it isn’t). … Castledoor ends its

residency at the Echo, with Frankel and a solo set from Aaron Espinoza (Earlimart)

starting things off. … Oliver Future’s residency closes with warm-up from Steve Barton

& the Oblivion Click. … Aushua’s ends its stand at the Silverlake Lounge with

strong support from In Waves and We Barbarians. … Pop Noir and Maxeen finish up their

co-residency at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. … And Hazelden and Radars to the Sky

highlight the Indie 103.1 night at the Viper Room.

Tuesday, Oct.

30

Heavy hitters everywhere: Thurston Moore at the Echo, Regina

Spektor at the Wiltern, Broken Social Scene at the Orpheum, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

at the El Rey … or, if you’re in the mood for something mellow, Chris and Thomas at the Hotel Cafe.

Velvet Revolver’s concert tonight with Alice in Chains, scheduled for the Verizon

Wireless Amphitheatre in Irvine, has been postponed because of the Southern California

wildfires. With evacuations having taken place in Irvine and the local schools closed

for the day due to poor air quality, promoters and the bands thought it best to

reschedule. The show will take place Dec. 12 at the Gibson Amphitheatre.

Not just

another pretty face?

Hearts of Palm UK, the duo who

came on our radar

earlier this year, won a $20,000 grant and a trip to perform in New York City when they

were picked as the music winners of the Uncover/Discover emerging talent contest put on

by the arts and entertainment foundation Gen Art and underwritten by Biore Skincare.

Erica Electra says she and partner-in-pop Ambi-D will use the money to finish up

recording their full-length album.

◊ ◊ ◊

Something for Rockets

debuted its new single, "Beautiful Life," today –in an episode of lonelygirl15. Hmm. This weekend, the band will make

its sophomore album, "One Track Mind," available for free download through its

MySpace site. Pretty nice of them. SFR plays with Low Vs Diamond on Nov. 2-3 at the

Viper Room.

◊ ◊ ◊

The British trio called the

Enemy has been forced to postpone its U.S. tour — which included dates Monday at

Spaceland and Tuesday at Cinespace — "due to issues concerning the band’s name in

North America only," according to a release from Warner Bros. Records.

There are several U.S. bands using that name, including the Rhode Island quintet, the Enemy. Reached by phone, a band member in

Rhode Island declined to say whether his band had any role in contesting the British

act’s use of the name: "It’s been interesting, to say the least, and we plan on

continuing to pursue things as the Enemy."

The British trio, teenagers from Coventry, signed to Warner this spring after some

nice chart success in the U.K.

◊ ◊ ◊

Division Day continues to digitally

release cover songs to celebrate the Oct. 2 release of their album "Beartrap

Island" on Eeenie Meenie. Here’s one of the latest, a cover of Roxy Music’s "More Than This."

Speaking of Eenie Meenie, another of its L.A. acts, Great Northern (playing Nov. 8 at

the Echoplex), will release a five-track EP described as the "prequel" to its

album "Trading Twilight for Daylight." Titled "Sleepy Eepee," the

batch of early recordings was previously available only at shows. Now they will be

released on iTunes on Nov. 6 (with a disc due in February).

[Quick note about tonight, as my day job prevents me from prattling on too much

about anything …]

Light FM celebrates the release of its

new EP, "Save the Drama," tonight at Boardner’s. It’s a nice slice of crunch,

Weezer-ish pop that they oughta play as club music before every Rentals show. I

scribbled a bit on Josiah Mazzaschi back in July; read it here.

Also on the bill at the free Radio Free

Silver Lake show are Nightfur and Lo-Fi Sugar.

Elsewhere, it’s a tough choice for folks who wear black — Interpol plays the Forum, while the Jesus and Mary Chain and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club team up

at the Wiltern. … Tokyo Police Club brings

the dance to the El Rey. … Kill the

Complex joins the fray at the Ruby night at the Key Club. … And Man Man entertains at the Troubadour.

Talk about Dad Rock: "One Track

Mind," the forthcoming sophomore album from L.A. trio Something for Rockets, features a

guest turn from frontman Rami Perlman’s father — violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman. "He’s been

our No. 1 fan from Day 1," Rami says. "When writing the record, I kinda knew I

wanted him to be involved."

Enter the wistful song "Same Old Thing," which Rami describes as "like

a Puccini aria, almost schmaltzy on some level. I knew I wanted that song to tug at the

heartstrings."

In L.A. for a concert, the elder Perlman, 62, joined Rami, bandmates Josh Eichenbaum

and Barry Davis and producer Mark Hoppus (the ex-Blink-182 bassist) in the studio for

what Rami calls "probably the highlight of my music-making career." How did it

go? "My dad cracked jokes the whole time," Rami says. "And he met

[ex-Blink drummer] Travis Barker. That was quite a meeting."

The making of the record was being filmed too; at some point, fans might get a peek

at the process. "As he was leaving, the filmmaker said, ‘I want to make a

documentary just on this session,’ " Rami says.

That session and the others for "One Track Mind" — on which Hoppus also

guests — yielded an album that is a monumental leap from the lightweight electro-pop on

Something for Rockets’ debut. "The first album was more laptoppy, more of a dance

party," Perlman says, crediting input from touring player Jacques Brautbar

(ex-Phantom Planet) for spurring SFR toward a harder edge. "But now we’ve gone in a

rock direction. We got the live show to the point where we were kicking [butt], so it

felt like the right thing."

||| See Something for Rockets on Monday at Spaceland (opening for

residents Oliver Future) and Nov. 2 and 3 at the Viper Room with Low Vs Diamond.

||| Download "That’s a Lie" and visit the

band’s page at Original

Signal Recordings to stream the album.

[Colleague Liam Gowing reports from Saturday night’s show at the Roxy:]

Packed to the proverbial gills with teensters, most of whom seemed to be

hovering around the lower end of the 18-year-old age restriction, the Roxy was one big,

sloppy, sweaty party Saturday night, with all possible credit going to A-Trak, the 25-year-old Montreal native who is Kanye

West’s DJ and the mastermind behind the Fool’s Gold label.

His was a

laptop-heavy DJ set, leaving one to wonder just how much of the music was automated. But

that didn’t matter a whit to the kids, several of whom made the most of the critical

mass by crowd-surfing.

The mixes were hard, hyper-kinetic amalgamations of everything from indie rock to

hip-hop to electronica. Who would have thought that Gossip’s “Standing in the Way of

Control” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” could be sliced, diced and reconstituted one

after the other so smoothly? Actually, I misspeak. The tunes were as bumpy as could be.

You could just about feel the ones and zeros grinding against each other as A-Trak ran

it through his secret cache of software.

The man born Alain Macklovitch was everything that Girl Talk was hyped up to be and

then some. Call me a sucker, but I had a great time.

Nine bands, 12 bucks. That’s the story tonight at the Little Radio warehouse, where a New

Orleans-related charity show offers a bunch of good local talent. Radio Free Silver Lake

speculates that the special guest might be Giant Drag — the lineup on the flier is

reason enough to drop by the headquarters of the Internet radio station: Dios Malos, the Movies, the Submarines, Emma Burgess, Le Switch, the Henry Clay People, Tom Freund and Matt Ellis.

Also this weekend

The Black Lips play the first of

their three local shows tonight at the Troubadour. … Spencer Krug-led Sunset Rubdown plays the El Rey.

On Saturday, the Warlocks celebrate

the release of their latest, "Heavy Deavy Skull Lover," with a show at Safari

Sam’s, while West Indian Girl toasts the

release of "4th & Wall" at Spaceland. … Silversun Pickups play to a sold-out

Wiltern. … And for something completely different, try checking out Raspberry Cocaine at the Mountain

Bar. File it under: damaged electro with boundary-bending visuals.

And on Sunday, Ken Andrews returns to the

Troubadour, while the Go! Team cheers on

the crowd at the Echoplex.

Photo of the Henry Clay People by S. Cardoza

I have no idea whether the band will do well — though knowing the sensibilities of

the people who brought you "American Idol," I’d bet on them — but the

commercial that aired Thursday night promoting Fox’s new talent show "The Next

Great American Band" featured none other than Los Angeles quintet Rocket.

Haven’t heard about "The Next Great American Band?" My colleague Robert

Lloyd’s story is here. And a detailed story from Associated Press is her

e.

Rocket apparently made it as far as Lake Las Vegas (see photo above), where the

network invited 60 bands from the 6,000 entries it received to perform (in, as it turned

out, temperatures exceeding 100 degrees). The show starts tonight with the

sure-to-be-painful initial auditions.

Nobody in Rocket could be reached for an interview, but the act’s back story can make

your head spin. The "band" started in the Spaceland parking lot after a show

when three blonde women — all named Lauren — struck up a conversation with Jim Freek,

who runs a boutique label of mostly kitschy power-pop bands, Teenacide. Freek asked the young women what they

did, and one replied, "We’re in a band," although none was, or had been. Asked

the name of the band, one of the Laurens quickly replied, "Rocket." And a band

was born.

Rocket’s first EP for Teenacide was largely covers and ghost-written (and -played), but

the band changed some players, practiced like crazy, became a fivesome, started writing

its own material and released a second EP that mixed covers with originals. The

quintet’s music mostly rehashes girl-group pop, but in a spunky and charming way; from

its bubblegummy beginnings, Rocket has acquired a confident edge.

And its tireless touring has paid off. I remember attending their first show at Club

Good Hurt in West L.A. and thinking Rocket would never last, but I sold them short. The

band made the rounds on the Warped Tour, toured with the likes of Butch Walker and even

did a residency at Spaceland.

They’re kind of made for TV — in fact, singer Lauren Rocket even appears on the new

Junkie XL single "More" (off the Dutch

musician’s new album "Booming Back at You," due in February), and in the

forthcoming video for the song.

||| Stream Rocket’s music here.

Photos: Top, Rocket, from Fox Photo; above, Lauren Rocket on the set

of the Junkie XL video shoot, by lastnightsparty.com.

On Tuesday night, the Subways marked the

completion of studio sessions for their sophomore album rather ceremoniously — the last

note was played when drummer Josh Morgan banged a gong that was set afire.

On Wednesday, the British trio brought some heat of its own, delivering a blistering

10-song set to an appreciative Club NME crowd at Spaceland that included, among others,

their producer for the yet-untitled album, Butch Vig. The night was capped by

their memorable single "Rock and Roll Queen" and pretty much extinguished any

doubts that the precocious punkers could be major players.

Singer-guitarist Billy Lunn — the problems that required January surgery to remove

vocal nodes now behind him — confessed to the crowd that he, Morgan and bassist

Charlotte Cooper were nervous, not having played live in months. But his manner, part

cocksure smile and part sneer, indicated otherwise. New songs "Kalifornia,"

"Turnaround," "Girls and Boys" and "I Won’t Let You Down"

fit into the set seamlessly with six numbers from the band’s 2006 debut, "Young for

Eternity."

"There are times I look at Billy and think, ‘What the [heck] are you doing to

your voice?’ " Cooper said afterward.

"My voice is as good as ever now," Lunn said. "There were some points

when we were making the record when I wanted to get back in the vocal booth … I told

Butch, ‘No, I do that better,’ or ‘I can scream louder there.’ " As for the six

weeks in L.A. working with Vig, Lunn said, "He was so much more than a producer.

He’s just the coolest [guy] on the planet — I don’t know if it’s his temperament or

what, but we were like sponges, always wanting to learn."

Tentative plans are for the album to be out in March on Warner.

Photos by

Kevin Bronson / LAT.

I’m pretty

sure that the exclusive agreement between the Spice

Girls and Victoria’s Secret — the

forthcoming "Spice Girls: Greatest Hits" will be available for two months only

at the lingerie outlet — was made simply to provide fodder for monologues on late-night

talk shows.

"What’s more embarrassing than going into Victoria’s Secret to buy bras and

knicker for the missus?" asks a bloke who was probably a fan way back in the ’90s.

"Going into a Victoria’s Secret to buy a Spice Girls CD."

"What’s the only thing skimpier than the lingerie in Victoria’s Secret?"

asks the fellow at the next desk. "The tracklist on ‘Spice Girls: Greatest Hits.’

"

Back to the day job.

Photo by Mike Owen