Post-Nothing
Let’s face it, if Japandroids had released Post-Nothing on Vagrant, it would have had a much quieter landing in 2009. For all the incredible music on their debut album, the best move that Brian King and David Prowse made all year was positioning themselves as an indie rock band, rather than the emo-punks they probably secretly are. What with all the high-pitched bellowing and the mid-90’s punk sensibility, Post-Nothing listens like a guilty pleasure, except that guilty pleasures are rarely as gratifying on repeat. Japandroids may in fact be the Darryl Hall & John Oates of indie rock; they play an immaculately conceived mishmash of cool and uncool sounds. Sophisticated is far from the right word to describe it, but the band has a way of bracing its teen angst with a veteran’s sense of structure and dramatics. Lyrically, for example, the songs on Post-Nothing are incredibly spare. King and Prowse often repeat a single line for the length of a verse or chorus, but those lines are airtight incantations of incredible depth and precision.
Post-Nothing is a quarter-life crisis album, made by two guys in the thick of it. It chases after the past, and dreads the future; or, as King and Prowse put it on “Young Hearts Spark Fire,” “I don’t wanna worry about dying/ I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls.” Japandroids constantly forget how young they are, so they have to keep reminding themselves. It’s no coincidence that Post-Nothing begins with an allusion to “The Boys are Back in Town.” In Thin Lizzy’s deathless jam, the boys arrive back in town to relive their youth by drinking, fighting, playing pool, and tossing money in the jukebox—riding into the sunset on the back of a barstool. On their album-opener, Japandroids’ boys are leaving town without a clue whether or not they’ll make it back. A couple of songs later, they’re hitching a ride to Bikini Island, where there’s a wet-haired sunshine girl around every corner. Shortly after that, they’re pledging to stay crazy forever, as if it’s Britney Spears making a pact with Taryn Manning in Crossroads. Yet, for all of its adolescent attitude, Post-Nothing is a record that has tremendous appeal for those who’ve already weathered their mid-20’s—perhaps because Japandroids’ nostalgia is for a time in their lives that hasn’t even happened yet.
-Martin Brown, 2009
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