Japandroids – ‘Fate & Alcohol’ review: a fitting send-off for these recklessly romantic rock greats

16 October, 2024

Japandroids

For a while, it seemed as though the ending to Japandroids’ story would resemble a TV show cancelled at a narrative fork in the road, its characters left to wander towards imagined fates instead of something more concrete. In truth, that probably would have worked for a decent chunk of their listenership, who could have happily pictured the duo eating up the miles between dive bars for the rest of time. But ‘Fate & Alcohol’, their fourth and final album, cuts that idea off at the knees.

Arriving seven years on from their third, ‘Near To The Wild Heart Of Life’, which both expanded upon Japandroids’ sound and took away some of its muscle, ‘Fate & Alcohol’ belatedly adds a full stop to a tale that looked set to be defined by its open-endedness, both in a literal and artistic sense.

When they screamed into view with their scratchily euphoric 2009 debut ‘Post-Nothing’, Brian King and David Prowse’s songs rocked in a way that suggested the very act of rocking together might be enough to redeem a bad week or even a bad year. In their world, there was always tomorrow and the bleary-eyed chance of a do-over.

For this reason, disappearing without so much as a goodbye and leaving the chips to fall where they may would have fitted Japandroids like a glove. But even a cursory listen to ‘Fate & Alcohol’ reveals that this doesn’t chime with who they are now. Fundamentally, this is a record that deals with the thorny issue of people changing.

These days, King is sober and set to walk away into a more regular life with a day job and kids and all that stuff. Prowse, meanwhile, recently confided that he’d “rather be playing drums and going all over the world playing shows” than calling it a day. The record neatly captures this bittersweet fracture, serving up a canny blend of ‘Celebration Rock’-style guitar bluster and hook-driven power-pop that is also suitably introspective. “Urgency, innocence and, when it comes to fucking up, firsthand experience,” King sings on ‘Fugitive Summer’ as his guitar threatens to gutter out.

During the rousing, blissfully noisy one-two of ‘Chicago’ and ‘Upon Sober Reflection’, ‘Fate & Alcohol’ has the juice to make you forget the lights are about to go out, harnessing the energy that once made Japandroids’ reckless, romantic barroom epics so at odds with the real world.

Answering that, though, is the fizzingly melodic ‘Positively 34th Street’, where King earnestly speaks of love and an existence outside music with the fervour and desperation he once reserved for another beer and a stage in the next town over. “If I don’t hurry up, if I don’t make this bet, I might miss a moment,” he sings. If that isn’t Japandroids, what is?