Japandroids play 529 tonight (Sat., Oct. 17)
October 17th, 2009 by Chad Radford in Music news
Last week I caught up with drummer David Prowse whom, along with guitarist David King, make up the Vancouver noise punk duo Japandroids, to discuss everything from their debut full-length Post-Nothing, to life as Canadians on the American road.
Chad Radford: Your album is called Post-Nothing, which sounds like a loaded title.
David Prowse: It’s like a dig at how calling something “post-this” or “post-that” has reached a level of ridiculousness. A long time ago Brian started referring to us as post-nothing, and it went up on our Myspace page and kind of stuck. It’s totally a tongue-in-cheek kind joke, so we decided to go with it for the name of the album.
Do you get a lot of post references when people write about you?
We get a million different kinds of weird references. Everybody tries to come up with an original way of labeling the band — one label that our friends like the most is “electromash.” I don’t know what that means or how it describes our band at all… We get all kinds of weird labels like that. No-Fi… Shit Gaze.
Shit Gaze is one of my favorites. It doesn’t sound like a compliment at all though, huh?
No, it certainly doesn’t.
Japandroids “Young Hearts Spark Fire” mp3
Japandroids, Real Estate and Surfer Blood play 529 tonight (Sat., Oct. 17). $8-$10. 9 p.m. 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769.
I wouldn’t call you guys shit gaze anyway. I reserve that one for a band like Psychedelic Horseshit, but maybe that’s because they already have “shit in their name.”
Right, so you’re already looking for a way to incorporate it.
I don’t think of Japandroids’ songs in terms of any kind of post-anything.
Whenever anyone asks me what kind of band I play in I say garage rock. That’s the easiest way of saying it. It’s exactly accurate, but what we play is loud and fast and fun.
There are extreme garage Nazi’s out there who would scoff at the notion of calling Japandroids a garage rock band.
Very true. People get so obsessed with labeling things, that it’s ridiculous. I know there are bands who really try to recreate the sound and feeling of playing this kind of music in the ’60s, but what we’re doing is a bit more modern.
Your record strikes me as being similar to something like No Age. Do people drop the No Age bomb on you a lot?
For sure. I can see where similarities come up. I don’t think we’re all that similar to each other, but I can see it. We’re a two-piece, they’re a two-piece. They’re noisy and write pop songs that are drenched in super fuzziness and played super loud. When it comes to those elements we’re pretty similar, but I think our song structures are very different. I’m never surprised to hear the comparison, but I like No Age, so it’s a compliment.
You’re from Vancouver, correct?
I was born and raised there. Brian is from a town just outside of Vancouver but he moved there about 5 or 6 years ago. That’s when we really started jamming out together. But really we’ve been playing together lackadaisically for about 10 years.
Have you toured throughout a lot of Canada?
Not really. For a long time we couldn’t tour much because Brian had a pretty real job. We couldn’t take months off so we would do really small tours around Vancouver. Seattle and back. Victoria and back. We flew to Montreal last year. We did a bunch of weekend things. But since things have started taking off we’ve been touring a lot.
Pretty much all in the States?
Yeah but we’re going to the U.K. to open for A Place To Bury Strangers on some shows.
It seems like it would be difficult to do a tour of Canada because the cities are so far apart.
Yeah, it’s some long drives man. The real problem with Vancouver is that it’s so isolated. Seattle is only a few hours away, but until you become a well established band it’s expensive to get a Visa and be allowed to go over the boarder and play legally in the U.S. So you have to sneak across which is always a stressful, weird experience. Or you can drive 10 hours to the next biggest city, or you can take a ferry — which is expensive and time consuming — to play a show in Victoria. Being a band in Vancouver means playing a ton in Vancouver. If you want to tour you really have to take weeks to do it; and do a lot of driving. It’s strange to be in the United States where you can drive for two hours and be in another city. It makes things a lot easier.
We’ve never driven across Canada on tour. There are some vast stretches where there just aren’t any people. We’ve been crisscrossing back-and-forth, playing in the States and then darting up for a couple of shows in Canada and heading back to the States again.
How long has your album been out?
It was released in Canada on April 28th. The official release in the States was August 4th. There was a weird period of time when we had a Canadian label that was kind of distributing to the U.S. but it was super limited. People in America could get it, but it took a while. Then we signed to Polyvinyl and they put the record out in the States — and worldwide as of September. That’s why we’re going to the U.K.
Tell me about the song, “Young Hearts Spark Fire.”
That’s one of my favorite songs to play live because it’s just a lot of fun to play. It’s the guaranteed song that everybody knows. It’s gotten the most hype, press and exposure. It’s an amazing feeling to play that song in any city and have people know all of the words and be super excited to rock out to it. It’s an absurd experience and I’m always amazed when it happens.
(Photo by Leigh Righton)
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