On The California Imaginary

Read any review of L.A.'s No Age and it will make reference to The Smell and the downtown area of L.A.'s hollow center. Whether they're written up on Pitchfork or in the New Yorker, No Age have made literal the image of their Weirdo Rippers album cover that depicts the band's name upon the marquee of the downtown venue, The Smell.

No Age is the Los Angeles underground.

When No Age play, they reimagine bedroom pop as raw and unformed. In the imaginary space of the bedroom singer's head, these songs are perfect. In the place of the actual they appear messy, but their messiness sparks the imaginary in the way their actual perfection never can.

The perfect-actual is uninspiring, it's cold and empty. The draw of the perfect-imaginary is in the gap of the messy-actual, the listener fills the gap with their own imaginary, making it whole, making it theirs.