BEST OF 2010 (albums) #4 No Age - Everything In Between (Sub Pop)

Indie rock started with guitars; lots and lots of distorted, fuzzy, buzzy, wall of sound guitars. Since it's inception though, straight-up indie ROCK has become an increasingly rare thing. Over the past couple of decades indie has come to mean chamber pop, electronica, folk and about a million other musical permutations, none of them having anything to do with rock. In the past few years though, a handful of bands have made it their mission to put the rock back in indie rock by way of the lo-fi garage explosion. No Age was one of those bands, and with "Everything In Between" they went from just another one of those bands to The Band. "Everything In Between" is a diverse and dynamic mixture of barn burning punk rockers, introverted strummers and experimental pop gems, it's also an album that shuns affectation for substance and weight, and pushes indie guitar rock to its boundaries, raising the bar for everyone, old and new alike. If you have been bemoaning the state of indie rock since the advent of Sufjan Stevens and the Decemberists, I promise you that "Everything In Between" will restore your faith.