On October 18 Japandroids will release Fate & Alcohol, their fourth and final full-length. Written in part while the duo—drummer-vocalist David Prowse and guitarist-vocalist Brian King—were touring behind their 2017 ANTI- debut, Near to the Wild Heart of Life, the album is at once a return to form and a thrilling step forward, a monument to the chemistry they’ve honed over nearly two decades side-by-side. It is their finest work to date, the sound of a band bowing out at the peak of their powers.
Prowse and King met in the early 2000s as students at The University of Victoria in British Columbia. They quickly bonded over a shared love of Wolf Parade and Constantines, bands whose earnest, heart-on-sleeve indie rock would become a blueprint for Japandroids, which they’d eventually form in 2006 as the two found themselves both living and working in Vancouver. “From the moment we started playing,” Prowse says, “there was something that felt special to both of us.”
Recorded in Vancouver with longtime collaborator Jesse Gander, Fate & Alcohol finds them pursuing new ways to bottle that same rush – to write songs with the vitality and dynamic interaction of their early material, without sacrificing any of the nuance or ambition that marked Near to the Wild Heart of Life. Nowhere is that more deeply felt than lead single ‘Chicago,’ a song whose sheer momentum feels inevitable—from the romance of its opening chords to the snare-led explosions that see it through.
But it goes deeper than that. If Near to the Wild Heart of Life found the duo pushing themselves to write music that didn’t rely on (or simply recreate) the raw power and easy pleasures of Celebration Rock, Fate & Alcohol is meant to merge what they loved about both. “As a band, you always want to feel like you’re progressing while simultaneously preserving what’s unique about you,” King says. “This record combines the energy and abandon of the first two with the storytelling of Near to the Wild Heart of Life—youthful exuberance but tempered with a point of view, of life lived.”
You can hear those ideas collide on ‘D&T,’ a song whose natural effervescence is shot through with glimpses of the morning after.
When asked to reflect on their career and all they’ve accomplished, both Prowse and King are hesitant to think in terms of legacy. They consider Fate & Alcohol a parting gift to fans, because Japandroids have approached every recording as fans themselves, from influences and ethics to artwork and merch. “I don’t think we’re the most technically proficient band in the world,” Prowse says. “And we’re not the most original-sounding or challenging band in the world. But we’ve always put a lot of passion into what we do, and I think that’s resonated with a lot of people. And I’m really grateful that we could be that band for people, in the same way that so many bands were for us.”
Look back on their body of work and you’ll find songs that feel like they were written for this moment, for an ending. Songs of celebration and adventure and tomorrows deferred, but also, at their heart, songs about the fleeting nature of everything. If Japandroids wrote and played like this—a dream from the start—might end at any second, it’s because they knew it could. All great things do.
Pre-Order ‘Fate & Alcohol’
1. Eye Contact High
2. D&T
3. Alice
4. Chicago
5. Upon Sober Reflection
6. Fugitive Summer
7. A Gaslight Anthem
8. Positively 34th Street
9. One Without the Other
10. All Bets Are Off
