We don't usually preview upcoming gigs, because we're not in the habit of regurgitating PR pieces for bands that generally don't need it. When you get down to it, what can a preview really say? It can't talk about the gig itself, because that hasn't happened yet. It can't just be an interview with a band member, because interviews are their own thing. It can't just review the album, because a band's live show is by its very nature something entirely different. So for a preview to be of any use whatsoever, it has to carry the weight of a recommendation from a trustworthy friend. It has to make you want to get out of your seat and go buy a ticket. It has to convince you that this band, more than any other band playing in any given town on any given night, is worth your time and your money, and the only way for it to do that is if its writer is willing to get shamelessly personal about how much this band means to him or her. For now, Japandroids is that band and I'm that writer. Things might be about to get weird.
Japandroids is a two-piece band from Vancouver that sounds like it has at least twice as many members: Brian King on guitars, David Prowse on drums, both of them singing. How fucking badass is this band? Their drummer shares a name with the dude who was inside Darth Vader's costume, that's how fucking badass this band is.Released in August 2009 to great acclaim, the band's debut album, Post-Nothing, is still the album from last year that I find myself playing most. Out of nowhere, I'll crave the sugar rush garage punk pop noise joy of "Young Hearts Spark Fire", or the smart-stupid exuberance of "Wet Hair". It's a tremendous piece of work, eight top-to-bottom great songs, not a dud amongst them, often lasting close to five minutes apiece but speeding past as if they were less than two.
What's most endeared it to me, though, is the rare sense of innocence about it. Not the twee, bookish faux-naivete of a Belle & Sebastian or The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, but rather a genuine sense of unbridled possibility, of the joys of being young, horny, and in a band. As far as I can tell, Post-Nothing is more or less unique in the current musical climate - indie, rock, pop, hip-hop, whatever - in that it's all about the love two straight men have for each other. Sex doesn't enter into it (well, it does, but only the pursuit of it with others). It's an album that eulogises the love that exists between friends the same way most eulogise romantic love. Just watch performance footage for the proof: these are guys who make no disguise of how much they enjoy each other's company. That there's only two of them in the band further strengthens the 'you and me versus the world' kind of vibe. And it's utterly goddamn adorable.
Post-Nothing is, if not a concept album per se, at least a conceptual album, all about growing up, leaving home, moving on; about what happens post-school, post-university, when you still don't feel like a proper adult; about how important it is to take the advice of Morrissey and hold on to your friends. The front cover is a Polaroid shot of King and Prowse embracing, brothers literally in arms. They go out, get drunk, try to pull, and after everything is said and done still have each other. There's something incredibly touching about that, especially when it's surrounded by songs of such furious optimism.
They sing individually using collective pronouns, or collectively using individual pronouns. Album opener "The Boys Are Leaving Town" has approximately two repeated lines that aren't also the title, to wit: 'will we find our way back home? I don't know.' They might as well add 'don't care'. I'm massively tempted to reproduce the lyrics of "Young Hearts Spark Fire" in their entirety, because the song so perfectly captures the exuberance and team-minded ethos that lies at the heart of the band. But it's all there in the first verse: 'We finished our old lives, like we finished off the wine. Now we're used to staying up all night, two hearts beating, oh yeah, oh yeah.' Then the chorus: 'We used to dream, now we worry about dying... I don't want to worry about dying. I just want to worry about those sunshine girls.' It's in "Wet Hair", too, with its ridiculous, barely-there wordplay: 'these girls are all Bikini Kill, we need a ride to Bikini Island!', 'we run the gauntlet, must get to France so we can french kiss some French girls!'.
The core of their appeal, however, lies in "Crazy/Forever", which is three simple lines repeated over and over again over sweetly squalling guitars and pounding drums that builds in intensity as it goes: 'We'll stick together forever, stay sick together, be crazy forever.'
They won't. At some point, the band'll break up. The real world'll take its toll. They'll get married, have kids. They'll see each other less and less frequently. They'll settle down. Maybe get a nice house, steady jobs. They probably know all this themselves. But for now, they've put it far enough out of mind to genuinely believe what they sing, to take genuine pleasure out of it, and to genuinely love each other like brothers. That's a thrill of emotion that no subsequent tour will ever capture beyond this, their first European headline tour off the back of their first full-length album. Put simply, there will never be a better time to see Japandroids, and there will rarely be a better, more fully-formed band at such an early stage in its career than Japandroids. That's why you need to see them.
Japandroids play: Freebutt, Brighton - Feb 22nd; ICA, London - Feb 23rd; Cockpit 3, Leeds - Feb 24th; Deaf Institute, Manchester - Feb 25th; King Tut's, Glasgow - Feb 26th; Korova, Liverpool - Feb 27th
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