Unlike many of 2009's breakout indie bands, Vancouver's Japandroids weren't hanging onto their youth out of nostalgia. For this duo, it literally sounded like a matter of life and death. While the chaotic, fist-pumping anthems of Post-Nothing were as reckless, hormonal, and pleasure-obsessed as any teenager, escapism wasn't an option. Singer/guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse have admitted that Japandroids were shutting down the operation after years of going nowhere, and Post-Nothing was as meant as a swan song more than a debut. And for a half hour, they played with the desperation of young men about to lose something vital forever. That urgency is rarely a renewable resource, so as more time passed between the excellent 2010 single "Younger Us" and Post-Nothing's follow-up, the more worrisome its lyrics became. Where they had once vowed to go into adulthood kicking and screaming, had they survived only to surrender? That was the question every time King began a verse with what Tony Soprano called the lowest form of conversation: "Remember when?"
"Younger Us" is now the sixth song on the awe-inspiring Celebration Rock, and nothing has changed except how its context raises the possibility that it doesn't actually have to be about them. This shift in perspective is crucial to understanding how Celebration Rock can somehow manage to completely dwarf its impressive predecessor despite being made the same exact way-- same personnel, same producer, same minimal-overdub policy, same instruments, same eight-song tracklist. Hell, even the cover's pretty much the same. But in writing about something other than the experience of being Japandroids, the duo taps into a power greater than itself to address impossibly vast and elemental topics-- friendship, lust, revenge, art, self-actualization-- with songs every bit as big. The uptick in ragged and resonant guitar-based indie rock has dredged up a lot of deserved Replacements comparisons, but I don't think anything's captured their spirit to the extent of Celebration Rock: it's the Mats who had the chops to pay homage to Big Star, the irreverence to cover "Black Diamond", and the empathy to write "Sixteen Blue".
Combined with the revved-up riff on opener "The Nights of Wine and Roses", King's first lyric ("Long lit up tonight/ And still drinking/ Don't we have anything to live for?/ Well of course we do/ But until they come true/ We're drinking") recalls a time when the Hold Steady shot for something similar. But whether it was their tendency to write from a storytelling perspective or generally avoid choruses in favor of inside jokes, the Hold Steady always created some sort of distance from the listener. I've never been fully convinced that Craig Finn and co. wrote about people who'd actually listen to their music. Not so here, where Japandroids take on something like a Woody Guthrie anthropological approach. "On a lot of this new record, we actually tried to simulate the sound of what we thought the crowd would do during the songs," King told us in an interview back in March. "Dave and I were in the studio just screaming out as if we were in the audience at our own show."
And indeed, Japandroids are dealing with the real populist stuff on Celebration Rock. Sometimes the roots are exposed; "American Girl" gets a nod during the cow-punk rodeo of "Evil's Sway" and "Adrenaline Nightshift" follows in the footsteps of the Replacements' "Alex Chilton", honoring the lineage of transformative rock music by adding to it. But mostly, it's in how Celebration Rock treats every day like the last day of school, raising a glass to the past, living in the moment and going into the future feeling fucking invincible. It offers itself up as a social lubricant, music meant for radios, keg parties, road trips; the extent to which plural pronouns exceed singular is no accident.
And this is all achievable since the first thing you take from Celebration Rock is just how much they've improved in terms of capturing pure sound, everything hitting louder and clearer than before. Post-Nothing was an emotional blast and also a sonic blur, Prowse and King recreating their cramped live show to the point where they may as well have been in mono. Likewise, some songs lived and died on a single riff or lyric. Celebration Rock remains structurally minimal but incredibly dense, fashioning a bionic kind of rock music from the best parts without a moment that lacks crowd-pleasing purpose. The verse melodies take more chances and any time a guitar chord suspends, there's almost always a windup of a drum fill anticipating the duo gleefully throwing themselves into a flashmob-like chorus. If Celebration Rock were much longer than 35 minutes, it might actually be exhausting, the emotional and melodic onslaught so overwhelming that a Gun Club cover of all things is the only time you might be able to catch your breath between the fireworks that begin and end the record*.*
But "For the Love of Ivy" cleaves Celebration Rock in a way that makes structural sense. The first half feels like the one obsessed with classic rock legacy, and initially you're left reeling from the wallop of "Fire's Highway" and "The Nights of Wine and Roses"'s haymaker hooks. There are micro-level pleasures to appreciate too-- the Tom Petty rip might get the crowd going, but that little pivot before the chorus of "Evil's Sway" where it shifts from a breakneck rant to a major-key bridge is really where I hear a band making a huge leap in songwriting technique.
That's even more evident in terms of lyrics, where Japandroids have gone from having almost none at all to packing their songs with an astonishing command of legend and literalism that all but dares you to feel something. Everything burns brighter than it does in reality here ("sexual red" is their color of choice) and most human interactions are likened to explosions. What's the "Adrenaline Nightshift"? It's a "generation's bonfire," the affection of a girl with "a blitzkrieg love and a Roman candle kiss." Still unsure? How about "there's no high like this." I can't intelligently describe "hearts from hell" or why they "collide on fire highway's tonight" but I don't have to. "We dreamed it now we know," King belts and if you don't know, just wait for the guitar solo which doesn't play notes so much as release a blue streak of endorphins. Now you know.
While Celebration Rock is undoubtedly a fun record, it earns its spot amongst their heroes by discovering its emotional ballast during the near-perfect Side B. "Adrenaline Nightshift" and "Younger Us" are psychologically complex songs about simple pleasures of music and companionship that generate the momentum required for "The House That Heaven Built", the crest of Celebration Rock's rising action and the pinnacle of their songwriting. Over its five minutes, "House" grows increasingly heavy without any adding any superficial layers, Prowse's militant drum beat multiplying into tense fills, King's single guitar chord doubling over itself and a near telepathic vocal interplay delivering maybe the most inspiring of Celebration Rock's life-affirming credos*:* "When they love you and they will/ (And they will!)/ I'll tell 'em all they'll love in my shadow." Whether it's an unappreciative boss, an unfeeling lover, or just a hometown you've outgrown, Japandroids got your back. Throughout "The House That Heaven Built", you hear a band accumulating enough confidence to deliver the valedictory message of an album where 95% of the lyrics are immediately available for a senior yearbook quote: "It's a lifeless life with no fixed address to give/ But you're not mine to die for anymore/ So I must live."
This leads into the relatively restrained "Continuous Thunder", the one song here I'm really tempted to misread so as to apply it to Japandroids themselves. There's a devastating admission in the bridge that bookends the intro from "The Nights of Wine and Roses" ("If I had all of the answers/ And you had the body you wanted/ Would we love with a legendary fire?"), and the opening line, "The heart's terrain is never a prairie/ But you weren't wary/ You took my hand," is obviously addressed to a hesitant partner. But it plays to the overarching theme of being fearless in the face of doubt. Of course Japandroids couldn't act with the same urgency they did on Post-Nothing-- they're not in the same desperate situation, and they boldly manifest the confidence of having survived near-death experiences as human beings and as a band.
It'd be nice to think that Post-Nothing was inevitably too good to be ignored, but as a very untrendy band in a city with little support for live music, the odds were stacked against them. One lame show in front of the wrong crowd, the wrong choice of a single falling on the wrong set of ears, and that could've been it, just as they planned it. And yet, they went ahead anyway and soon found themselves playing to rooms full of people who don't have the answers, don't have the body they want, and have plenty of dreams that may never come true. But so what? Whether it's a result of faith in religion, in rock'n'roll, or another human being, two completely normal people can love each other with a legendary fire and it's no more ridiculous than two dudes pushing 30 years old from Vancouver called Japandroids making a rock record for the ages. You can be ambivalent about yourself but believe in something bigger, and the message is right there in the title: On Post-Nothing, Japandroids were worried about dying. This is a celebration of being alive.
