Japandroids were never supposed to make it out of the aughts. Having formed in 2006, the garage duo of singer-guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse recorded their excellent debut album, 2009's Post-Nothing, and planned to release it as a one-off, intending to go their separate ways after that.
As fans of indie rock know, it didn't work out that way. The surprise success of their towering single "Young Hearts Spark Fire" and the album it came from extended the band's lifespan by 15 years, making them one of the definitive bands of indie rock's time in the zeitgeist.
"It's bittersweet," Prowse tells Exclaim! of the band's farewell album, the newly released Fate & Alcohol. "We've had a tremendous run, and I'm incredibly grateful for all the experiences we've been lucky enough to have. It's an amazing thing to travel all over the world and have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people shouting along to your songs wherever you go. The success we had is so far beyond anything I could have possibly dreamed of. It's a bit sad to think about it coming to an end, but it's clear that it's time to hang it up and move on to other things, and I'm glad we were able to finish this album and put it out before we ride off into the sunset."
Japandroids won't be touring behind Fate & Alcohol, meaning that today represents the band's final chapter. To celebrate both the release of their fourth full-length and their career, we asked Prowse to pick his five favourite songs from the duo's catalogue. He's highlighting one song from each of their albums, plus one from their early years, that represent milestones in their evolution.
"Also, I tried not to pick anything too obvious," he adds. "I'm looking at you, 'The House that Heaven Built'!"
Read past editions of Exclaim!'s High 5 feature here.
"Couture Suicide"
All Lies (2007) / No Singles (2010)
This was the first "real" song that we wrote as a band. We had a few instrumental songs written before that, and we had dabbled with being the instrumental backing band for a different lead singer, but that fizzled out pretty quickly. So this was the first song we wrote after we had decided that this was it — we would be a two-piece band.
It was so exciting when this song came together. I hadn't listened to this song in a long time, but just listened to it and it's pretty adorable. I can hear all the pent-up anxious excitement in the recording. We had no idea what the hell we were doing, but we were stumbling onto something that sounded pretty cool. We were probably hopped up on red wine mixed with Dr. Pepper when we recorded this.
"Sovereignty"
Post-Nothing (2009)
This was a very new song when we recorded it for Post-Nothing, and I remember how impressed I was with Brian's lyrics. At the heart of it, it's such a sweet, simple love song. Post-Nothing was a strange time — we recorded an album and we were super proud of it, but at the same time things felt pretty hopeless and we decided to break up.
I listened to this song over and over in the car after we had recorded it. I remember feeling like Post-Nothing was good enough to take us beyond being a local Vancouver band, but that nobody outside of Vancouver would ever hear it. Turns out I was right about the first part, but wrong as hell about the latter! All these years later, this is still one of my all-time favourite Japandroids songs.
"Evil's Sway"
Celebration Rock (2012)
I remember playing this song for friends before Celebration Rock came out and telling them, "This is the first single for the new record." Boy was I wrong! Still, I love this song.
This was the first song we wrote for Celebration Rock — not counting "Younger Us," which had already been released — so it feels like the beginning of a new chapter for the band. We weren't these two regular dudes playing in a local band any more. Now we were a "professional" band. We had fans, we had a label, we had a booking agent, and we had something to live up to. That anxious energy had been reigned in a bit, and we had more time and money to make sure we got the perfect take for every song. We're still going a million miles an hour, but it feels juuust a little less like it's going to fall off the tracks at any moment. Plus, I got to do a little drum solo, which is fun.
"Arc of Bar"
Near to the Wild Heart of Life (2017)
This song is ridiculous and I'm so glad we made it. I remember this was the first time Brian wrote the lyrics first before we worked on any of the music. He was living in Toronto and I was in Vancouver, so we decided to meet up in New Orleans and rented a small house in the Lower Garden District. As you can imagine, we didn't get a ton of work done but had a great time down there...
Anyways, he showed me the lyrics — basically six straight verses — and explained he was trying to write our "Sympathy for the Devil." What a ridiculous thing to say! But clearly I was in my ridiculous phase as well, since my response to that was, "Hell yeah, let's go for it." It was a really tough nut to crack, but once we started building the song around that looped affected guitar line, it started to come together.
Near to the Wild Heart of Life was the first time we really let ourselves add additional overdubs in any significant way. We did the best we could to bake some dynamics into the initial performance, and then added lots of fun little overdubs to try and keep the listener — and ourselves — entertained for seven minutes. We even got some back-up singers! We lost our minds a little bit making this song, and the album, but I'm very proud of us for stretching our wings and pushing beyond what we'd done in the past.
"Positively 34th Street"
Fate & Alcohol (2024)
In my opinion, these are the strongest lyrics Brian's ever written. I told him that the first time he showed them to me. It's such a sweet little love story. I really feel like I can hear the conversations happening in this song, and can picture the locations where they're having them. There isn't a single wasted word. Everything serves the story. Even though this song was written a decade after "Sovereignty," I feel like they both capture a similar feeling. This time around it's coming from a wiser, more weary place, but there's still such a sweetness to the lyrics. I like that little bit of twang in this song — just a whisper of a Replacements (or maybe even Tom Petty?) vibe. We really wanted to keep the guitars and drums pretty simple to let the lyrics shine through. I still snuck in a couple tasty fills, though, because I couldn't help myself!