CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES. AND BAD. AND VOLATILE PHOTOGRAPHER -
and cutting loose on an open road. Capable of capturing moments without being explicit, it’s an album that revelled in the space and volume it creates, inviting you to colour in the blanks. Characterised by anthems and ambiguity, it set down a difficult benchmark for ‘Celebration Rock’ to follow. “We often get feedback from ‘Post Nothing’ and it’s usually about the feeling of a record,” Brian explains. “It’s quite a hard thing to understand, to capture how someone feels and try and use that for the next record. As far as the themes go, they’re pretty similar, but I think the ways they’re delivered have evolved. There isn’t too much you can do in a duo where you can evolve, sonically, album to album so I wanted to write more lyrics and say more. “In some of the five/six-minute songs, like ‘Crazy
– “Our relationship is far fr� perfect. In fact, it’s incredibly dysfunctional, but we make it work” –
LEIGH RIGHTON
WRITER -
REEF YOUNIS
Forever’ where we weren’t actually saying anything, you’re letting the listener use their imagination, which has its merit, but I felt that was going to be taking the easy way out to do it on this record again. I think that was one of the things that helped people gravitate towards the first record.Thematically, I think they’re the same, I’m just saying more.” In the seven years since the band formed inVancouver, there’s a wealth of things to say. Brian and David’s longstanding friendship, coupled with the close twoperson band relationship, makes for an intense dynamic. The simplicity of two friends playing in a band and travelling the world together is a permeating one – from the on-stage bond to the sense of brotherhood to the Polaroid album sleeves, you know the balance between fondness and fury is the fuel for the band, no matter how exhausting it might be. Brian agrees. “We started the band in 2006 so this is our seventh year together,” he reiterates. “It’s quite rare that bands with four or five members will stay the same for that amount of time, unless you’re in a huge band and you get paid to stay. The relationships don’t stay consistent and creative and positive for that long and our relationship is far from perfect. In fact, it’s incredibly dysfunctional, but we’ve managed to make it work. I agree with that feeling of freedom and spirit and release, and I’m not sure how you’d capture that but it’s easier in a two-piece because you just need to focus everything through less of a committee and have to have more of a relationship.”
Three years ago, that relationship broke down completely. Brian and David reached an impasse and, for all intents and purposes, called it quits. Fast forward through a tumultuous few months and a touring schedule fuelled by fear as much as adventure and it’s easier to understand why Japandroids sound like a band hurtling along at light speed. It’s one of the reasons why we should celebrate a band as spirited as this. “What a lot of people don’t know is that we broke up for a few months after recording ‘Post Nothing’, and self-releasing the album was the last thing we wanted to do as a band,” says Brian. “We’d stopped booking shows, we’d stopped practicing together, we’d stopped working on new material and at the end of 2008/the start of 2009, we just weren’t a band anymore. “The sole motivation for us when we were in the band was that we never went on a proper tour and that was the Holy Grail for us. It still is: that idea of travelling and playing music for people was the big thing we wanted to do. One of the reasons, subconsciously, we toured on that record for two years, was that we felt if we stopped touring it’s going to be over. We only got back together to make a tour happen, then we got offered another tour, then we got offered to go to Europe.We didn’t even talk about doing a second record until the end of 2010.We were making it up as we were going along is what I’m trying to say. Our relationship is too volatile to really plan in advance so there’s no bullshit. Regular people are just making it up as they go along and just trying to work it out.We’re no different.”
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