Shared by: Self
I love Japandroids. Their single guitar being big enough to act alone undoubtedly inspired much of my guitar playing. Their first two albums are held close to my heart, and even their first couple EPs (now known as No Singles) have some gems too. But their third album, Near To The Wild Heart Of Life disappointed the hell out of me. So when I heard they were coming back to release one last album, I honestly wasn’t excited. I honestly thought it would be more of the same or worse, but I figured I’d try it out anyway. I’m really glad I did. My personal head canon is now gonna be that this is their third album, and it feels like a pretty natural evolution in that regard. I do miss some of the riskier moves of Post-Nothing. The guitar now is a lot less… jazzy? That’s a stupid term to use. But the first album felt like anything goes with the chords, whereas this feels very Heavenward Grand Prix style big throughout. I’m not against that style at all, but it’s definitely more predictable. I am, however against the sound of this album. Listen, I’m not listening to Japandroids for their recording quality. And it’s not fair to have this album immediately follow up a Kendrick Lamar album. But from Celebration Rock, the production here seems to clean up what I wanted dirtier, and left dirty what I wanted cleaned up. For example, the vocals sound less like they’re being recorded through an amp in the live room, but they have a cold saturation on them that doesn’t bring the energy back. The guitars sound crisper, but I don’t really feel like I’m hearing all of what he’s doing. A bunch of the time I feel like I can’t hear the drums much outside of the snare. Its been the same engineer since the start, and I feel the growth on each album. But the closer to “perfect” the mix gets, the easier to pick out its flaws. It’s a bummer since I think there are some serious winners here, and I appreciate this proper send off to a band that means a lot to me.
Added To Zune
Fave: Upon Sober Reflection, All Bets Are Off
Least: Alice,
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