W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

Japandroids – Fate & Alcohol

I say this with no hyperbole whatsoever, The Japandroids’ Celebration Rock album from 2012 just might be my favorite album of the 21st Century.  To me it’s an absolute pop punk meets stadium rock tour de force.  As such, it’s safe to say that I freaking love the band itself.  My appreciation for both David Prowse and Brian King goes well beyond the music however.  Ever since 2009’s debut with the Post-Nothing album, The Japandroids have pursued a career 100% on their own terms.  In this day and age of instant gratification and the bombardment of exposure via social media, these guys from Vancouver BC would regularly (or better yet very Irregularly) take years to release follow up albums.  It would be 3 years between Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock.  Another 5 years before we would see Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, and now 7 years after that we are finally getting their 4th LP, Fate & Alcohol.  What makes these gaps even more glaring is the fact that the band during these multiple down years would be completely radio silent.  No social media posts, no updates via email newsletters, no substack subscriptions, no Patreon memberships, no pop ups on podcasts, and certainly no live shows…DEAD SILENCE.  And as they did back in 2017 and again in early 2024, we’d all of a sudden, with no advance warning, see an announcement totally out of the blue of a new project to be released shortly.

As it turns out the latest Japandroids LP, Fate & Alcohol looks to be the band’s last as well.  A lot has changed for both David & Brian since we last saw them back in the summer of 2018.  Brian is clean and sober for over a year now.  He’s also expecting his first child sometime later this year.  Furthemore, King now lives in Ann Arbor, MI as his wife is a professor at University Of Michigan and as it turns out he currently can not return to Canada due to visa issues.  So it comes as no real surprise that the announcement of this new album also included that Fate & Alcohol would be their last.

All of that being said, if indeed F&A is their swan song LP, the boys are going out with a bang and most certainly on their own terms.  It comes with the patented Japandroids layered wall of sound of crashing guitar and booming drums as a backdrop to lyrical stories perfect for loud sing alongs.  One significant departure from the tried and true Japandroid formula is the fact that this album is completely devoid of their signature chorus of “OH OH OHS”.  But as I said, there’s still plenty to sing along to on Fate & Alcohol.  While the album is clearly what one would call a “breakup” album, it is one fraught with hope and optimism along with melancholy and nostalgia.

Oddly enough, for a guy who is working his way through being sober, Brian has elected to include bars and drinking within the plot stories of more than a handful of these songs.  From the opening track, “Eye Contact HIgh” we find ourselves alone at a local bar

 I can barely breathe saw a blue-and-red beer sign so i gave in to get out of the cold cause life calls for a double, when you’re awash in the afterglow happy hour

This tune ends with the singer alone in the cold snowy street searching to no avail for his lost love…a nod to the concept that one can’t go back?

The next tune, “D&T” finds us in another bar sitting alone and again lamenting a lost love.  Knowing that these thoughts are perilous to his well being, he continues to drink and the more he consumes the more he dives into his dreams of the past.  But then we get 

we all know the trouble imma get into tonight unless i fight, back against these demons of mine so take this fucking phone from my hand before i break down, call medicine man

Which leads me to believe that his romanticized dreams might not be for love lost but for a lifestyle which he knows is going to be his undoing.

A couple of songs later, it seems like our protagonist may be starting to see the light of day.  The tune “Chicago” ends with the words

thing about love, i know it when i see it so spare me the bullshit, it’s plain to see you can sit there, deny it all night, baby but this just friends act, ain’t fooling me and i’m so sorry, baby, but we call it like we see it, in chicago 

I tend to see this as being a nod to the idea that the demons that are haunting them can’t be dealt with half way.  It has to be all in or nothing at all.

Hands down, however, my favorite song on the album is definitely “Positively 34th Street”.  A clear nod to what just might be the biggest “fuck you” breakup song of all time, Bob Dylan’s “Possitively 4th Street”, King in his version instead offers up a happy ending shining with the hope of a new, clean and healthy life.  The song starts off like most of its predecessors on the album with the darkness of either drinking alone, or suffering the day after hangover from the previous night’s events, in this case the morning after hangover where the couple elect to dive further down the rabbit hole of abuse with more drugs and alcohol to kill the pain.  But as the song goes along, the two realize that they must go their separate ways in order to save their souls and lives.  They know they are perfect for each other, they know they match up perfectly with one another yet, this similarity is killing them both and they too know that as good as they are together, that’s exactly how bad they are for one another.  So one day

but we shared the same dreams though left them all behind, the day, we left new orleans she never said a word, still i could hear her from afar crying out to me, to lift the curse, keeping us apart

But by songs end, both of our characters have cleaned themselves up and realize the errors of their ways and the song ends with

i walked up to her doorstep, knocked upon that door she answered, and those eyes afire, cut me to the core if the worst should happen, well at least i got this song but she motioned me inside, said: what took you so long

I only wish that the album had ended on that note.  I don’t mean to say that the last 2 songs of the album aren’t worthy, but I just feel that that closing line with its hope and optimism was the perfect way to close out this chapter and unfortunately for us fans, the entire Japandroids book.

NOTE: A previous version of this review eroneously stated that it was Dave Prowse who had moved to Ann Arber rather than Brian King.