Ever notice that nobody writes songs about rock and roll anymore? At least not explicitly. I suppose that's not a bad thing. For every great one like "Rock and Roll Music" or "Rock and Roll Will Stand" or "Long Live Rock," there's a dozen clunkers like "Old Time Rock and Roll" (rock as nostalgia) or "Rock and Roll All Nite" (rock as mere hedonism) or "We Built This City" (no explanation needed).
But there's a reason that those artists wrote and sang those songs in the first place, and that's because rock and roll has always been more than just a musical genre, and I dare you to try and define it as one, anyway. The cliche says that rock and roll = rebellion, but it's a whole lot more complicated than that. In his brilliant Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh argued that rock isn't jut about rebellion, that it's about reconciliation, too. But I think it's both—it's rebellion against the notion that reconciliation and relationships aren't central and crucial to who we are. That notion pervades our lives, in the cult of individuality and independence, in the advertising and marketing that tries to reduce us to the brands we use and, lately (and most perniciously) to brands ourselves.
The best rock and soul is rebellion against the things and the people that deny who we are; that cut us off from each other, that pretend we're just atomistic revenue generators; that try to convince us it's all about work; that say we're anything but the glorious, flawed beating hearts and glowing, growing, flowing souls that we truly are; that pretend any one of us can exist for a second without each other. Rock is a rebellion against anyone and anything that tells us otherwise.
No current band better embodies that faith in rock and roll than Japandroids, to the point where they've taken some heat for it amongst the overwhelming critical praise. A friend of mine calls them "teenage boy music" (as if teenage boys or their music are inherently dismissable out of hand; see Harry Styles' recent comments about teenage girl fandom for the distaff corrective), and journalists frequently refer to them as "true believers" in rock and roll, as if that's a bad thing.
Of course it's a bad thing if it places rock and roll above all other genres, but music fans generally don't operate that way. While poptimism was a useful corrective to rockism's blind spots and the presumption that it's somehow superior to pop, I'd like to posit the somewhat novel theory that the two aren't mutually exclusive. More troubling than genre prejudice, I'd argue, is the critical tendency to hedge bets against sentimentality (which, let's face it, both pop and rock exalt in equal amounts, though the sentimentality is about different things) in favor of a detatched critical coolness that frankly goes against everything I turn to music for in the first place.
Back to Japandroids. As critic Matthew Perpetua wrote on Twitter in early 2017, "Many rock bands in the last 17 years have not reached their full potential because they didn't fully believe in the power of their genre. Japandroids don't have this problem, and that's why they are so fun and exciting to see live." Perpetua nails it; if you've ever attended a Japandroids show, you know there's no irony, no winking, nothing but a full-throttle embrace of, well, rock and roll. And while the band's first two albums, 2009's Post-Nothing and 2010's Celebration Rock (2010's No Singles was, well, a collection of singles more than an album qua album), were strong enough, this year's Near to the Wild Heart of Life is on another level entirely. It's both an album of love songs and an album about rock and roll, a living model of how rebellion and reconciliation are two sides of the same coin.
Sonically, it's an evolution from the band's previous albums, but the sound is bigger and fuller, and the songs are more melodic and anthemic.Though they now augment their sound with more background vocals and the occasional keyboard, the fact that guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse are able to create an arena-ready sound from just two instruments is one of the wonders of modern rock. As anyone who as seen them live will attest, their sound loses none of its impact in concert.
Japandroids at the Majestic Theater, Madison, Wis., 2/13/17
Near to the Wild Heart of Life opens with the title track, which draws its name from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and serves as an artistic statement of purpose. The band's friends encourage them to follow their rock and roll dreams "to go far away/ and make some ears ring from the sound of my singing, baby," a theme they revisit on the album's closer, "In a Body Like a Grave."
But if "Near to the Wild Heart of Life" is a call to hit the highway, "North East South West" manages to take on the well-worn road song with a twist. As he recounts his travels across the U.S. (and back to the band's beloved Vancouver home), King comes back to his romantic love: "Baby, the trouble that I get into/ It ain't shit compared to loving you."
Elsewhere on the album, King proclaims his undying love alongside "meals of mezcal" in "True Love and a Free Life of Free Will," reckons with love past, present, and future in "I'm Sorry (For Not Finding You Sooner)," and testifies that "no known drink and no known drug could ever hold a candle to your love." Near to the Wild Heart of Life might be the most romantic and Romantic rock album I've ever heard.
And then there's the album's centerpiece, the 7-minute-plus "Arc of Bar," a three-chord tour de force in which King's love for he city he's in (New Orleans) and the life he's chosen and the woman he's devoted to become indistinguishable. The song builds and builds, starting out with a four-note synth line that runs for the tune's duration, then adding drums, guitar, and eventually two sets of backing vocals working in counterpoint to the lead. The song threatens cacophony, but it's grounded in a promise that's at once inspirational and soul-shaking: "For her love I would help the devil/ To steal Christ right off the cross."
That testament chiseled in rock, the band settles into the lighter "Midnight to Morning," with joyful repetitions of "back home to you" interruptedby an instrumental bridge that achieves Branca-like levels of distorted guitar drone. After "No Known Drink or Drug," the album closes with "In a Body Like a Grave," which juxtaposes the heroic with the quotidian ("Christ will call you out/ School will deepen debt") and implores us to "love so hard that time stands still."
Near to the Wild Heart of Life is rebellion and reconciliation as one, and I swear it sounds better every time I listen to it.
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