Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Song of the Week

I'm not going to even pretend to know what week this post is supposed to represent. Who cares, this post might as well represent all of 2009 so far, because I've gotta really strain my brain to think of anything better than Japandroids 'Young Hearts Spark Fires' released in the last 5 months.

Where do I begin, this song has it all. Soaring, bleeding guitars crash into the thunderous drumming from this wondrous two man show. The duo wails each word of the song together in desperate two part harmony over a fantastically catchy melody, and their entire sound seems to be drowning in a garagey murk. Heaping praise on a two part group that can make a lot of noise and that plays lo-fi noise pop is painfully amateur right now, I'm aware. But these guys sound too damn sincere and their sound too damn timeless to be considered the product of any sort of popular fads in the indie music scene. If anything, its a blessing that they emerged in this atmosphere, because it means folks might actually give a fuck about the gloriously sloppy and unpolished music they are creating. Lets be grateful for that.

Now that I've done some ranting, I'll get back to actually talking about the song. Both sonically and lyrically it strikes directly at the confusion/romanticism/disillusionment of crossing the threshold from youth to adulthood. So much so, in fact, that I feel like if someone cleaned the song up and gave it some sparkling/nauseating production and a nasally voiced singer, it would sound just like the top of the charts pop punk that dominated the radio a few years ago during the heyday of Fall Out Boy and their ilk. Still, I feel the lack of pretension or self-awareness in both the bands delivery of their tune, and in their lyrical trappings, separates them from such potentially dangerous links. Check out some of the lyrics:
 
You can keep tomorrow, after tonight we're not gonna need it
Beat up, beat down, on the ground, we're too drunk to feel it

I can't help but think of some of the slacker greats of indie history listening to these guys, like Pavement, or my beloved Replacements. At the very least, its hard to deny that the tune has one of the better song titles in recent memory.

Check it out the Japandroids myspace: http://www.myspace.com/japandroids

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