Japandroids
Celebration Rock
I
had never heard of Japandroids until
reading Uproxx’s weekly post, “Five
Albums Coming Out This Week That Don’t Suck.” They posted the first track
off Japandroid’s latest album Celebration
Rock, “The Nights of Wine and Roses.” I liked it. So I did what I do when I
come across a new song by a new group that I just might dig: I looked them up
on Spotify. I ended up checking out everything I could, including No Singles and Post-Nothing. I definitely like Celebration
Rock the best.
The
new album sounds more mainstream. It’s something simple like that that’ll do it
for me. I listened to Celebration Rock,
enjoyed it for the most part, then went into the rest of the catalog reasonably
sure I’d enjoy that, too. Not so. No
Singles is just a mess. The vocals and the lyrics don’t seem to mesh with
the music. It’s not that either are necessarily bad, it’s just that they don’t
sound good together. That might be your cup of tea, but it isn’t mine. Post-Nothing is a bit better, but it’s
still a bit too raw for me, a little too punk. The most punk I’ll get is along
the lines of Rise Against or early Green Day. Pretty much the rest is just
yelling to/at me.
But
I got into Celebration Rock. The
rawness is still there, but it seems cleaner. There’s a musicality to
everything that I couldn’t appreciate with their previous efforts. It’s not
catchy; I don’t think I’ll ever find myself humming or singing along to it. As
with last week’s Blunderbuss review, Celebration Rock is wonderful background
music. And I might be able to see myself adding a couple of songs, “The Nights
of Wine and Roses” and “The Hosue That Heaven Built” spring to mind, to my
commute playlist as songs that I can eventually really get into.
Wanna
check out the CD don’t want to plunk down your hard-earned money without
hearing it first? Here you go! Straight from their Bandcamp page!
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