No Age concert makes South by Southwest a distant memory

As a native Texan, this is a difficult time of year for me — but No Age made it… As a native Texan, this is a difficult time of year for me — but No Age made it better.

Every March, my Facebook gets flooded with pictures of my friends at Austin’s South by Southwest festival seeing my favorite bands. Normally, I’d shut down my Facebook and mope, but WPTS’ recent No Age concert, featuring locals The Lopez and Triggers, reminded me that cool shows exist in Pittsburgh, too.

LA indie rockers No Age made the ballroom of the William Pitt Union feel like a SXSW show with the addition of full-on crowd interaction and an unabashed mosh pit.

The scenery of the William Pitt Union made for a perfect venue. Even No Age guitarist Randy Randall commented on the unique architecture.

“It’s great. Everything flows — kind of like linens in the wind,” Randall joked.

The band certainly used this to its advantage, incorporating the acoustics of the ballroom for its iconic lo-fi sound and using the abundance of space to get up-close-and-personal with the audience.

The concert’s two openers, local acts The Lopez and Triggers, provided a taste of the ballroom’s potential to become a bona fide rock-concert venue.

The booming guitar riffs from Jesse Lopez of The Lopez reverberated throughout the building, while vocalist Stephenwolf provided power-fueled vocals reminiscent of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O.

The Pittsburgh-native members of Triggers followed with similar tenacity. Guitarist Adam Rousseau cites a plethora of bands as his group’s influences. The inspirational variety was evidenced clearly by the band’s live set, which varied between moments of Fugazi-style intensity and more mellow vibes.

The local bands were perfect appetizers for the main course: No Age.

The LA rockers came out with full force, playing unfamiliar songs that were packed with so much intensity that the crowd still got into them.

As the show progressed, there seemed to be an expectation for a few trademark songs, one of which was “Eraser” from the band’s first major album, Nouns. Once the familiar plucks of the guitar began, a beautiful chaos ensued in the form of moshing and people jumping from the stage into the crowd — you could get that close.

When the band played the single “Fever Dreaming,” guitarist Randall literally came into the crowd and, well, shredded. Drummer Dean Spunt successfully smashed a microphone during the last song.

“That mic might be a little broken,” he joked as the band came out for their encore.

No Age’s performance was full of die-hard fans who don’t take a good show for granted. The result was an energy-infused and intimate show that made me think, who needs South by Southwest?