I think I've played Japandroids successfully in our house maybe twice. It typically gets overruled in the first 7 seconds and changed to something like 21 Pilots, Andrew McMahon, Erasure, or the Hamilton soundtrack. Tom Waits usually gets a better reception, although chances of making it all the way through a Tom Waits are better if I play early Tom Waits vs. late Tom Waits.
Some dads strive to encourage greatness in their kids. Some start and finish the day with inspirational quotes by Steve Jobs or Jack Welch. Some dads gage the success of their parenting by how their kids reflect morals or modesty or kindness or generosity or any of the other fruits of the spirit. My dad would lead family devotions around the kitchen table when we would skip church and he successfully shepherded two slacker boys to eagle scout status.
All those things are good, and I'm sure those dads have good kids, but we all know that the real evidence of true parenting success is when your daughter skips through 57 songs on her playlist to land on "The Nights of Wine and Roses" from the Japandroids' Celebration Rock album.
But here's the real kicker. Not only did she skip through 57 songs on her playlist to stop on "The Nights of Wine and Roses" from the Celebration Rock album, she reached over, turned the volume knob on that VW car stereo up as far as it would go, pressed the volume-up button on her iPhone as loud as it would go and proceeded to yell every lyric of that song perfectly from the start to finish. That girl knew every word.
In honor of that parenting success, here's an article I wrote a hundred years ago for my friend's music blog called Katie Darby Recommends (RIP). Katie generously overlooked many faults, poor thought process, grammar mistakes, and risked her professional reputation to publish two halfbaked Japandroid articles. Here is the first:
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Making Up Junk About Japandroids
I am not cool.
I typically spend my days fixing computer problems, listening to crappy bands like Angels and Airwaves and perfecting my fauxhawk. I like blueberry coffee from the dunkin donuts in our local Wilco gas station. I drive a station wagon with black cloth seats. So how in the world did I find Japandroids...
The truth is, they found me. They're on a mission to save the planet. Ok, well maybe just the world, but still... And even though you wouldn't know it by their name, they're not robots.
They're aliens.
Aliens, posing as hipsters. Or slackers. Of something. I mean, they're cuddling in flannel in the cover of the record, for goodness sake.
Let's examine a bit closer. This song, 'Young Hearts Spark Fire' --loaded with evidence that the Japandroids are aliens.
This song is a great Japandroids song... They're loud, they have great backing vocals and do this fuzzy thing with their voices. They even find a way to make their instruments fuzzy sounding. Only aliens would have technology so advanced to fuzz up their voices and their guitars and their drums at the same time. So advanced, that alien technology. Amazing really.
But forget about the music, the instruments and the fuzz….The lyrics to the song are where the hidden evidence lurks:
--->"You can keep tomorrow, after tonight we're not going to need it." Who says that kind of stuff? Aliens.
--->"Two hearts beating. Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah!!" Who has two hearts? Aliens
--->"I don't wanna worry about dying. I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls." What?!? Sunshine Girls? Girls that live on the sun? Who could possibly know about girls that live on the sun? Aliens.
(Just as an aside, I wish I had heard the song 'young hearts on fire' earlier in my life. I used to play loud, poppy punk records as loud as possible to help my twin girls to to sleep when they were babies. How much better would it have been to play songs about dreaming, death, young love, and sunshine than any random Sum 41 song.)
'Young Hearts Spark Fire' is a perfect song. The guitar, the drums are keenly fuzzed, the vocals are strong and in time, the words are well thought out, and the backing vocals scream in proper dystopian harmonics.
Verdict: Aliens.
Next Song in question (from a different record with no cuddling on the cover): 'The House that Heaven Built'
Another great song. More loud, more fuzzy-ness, a tad bit more produced sound (indicative of the entire record? I don't know. I only listened to this one song--isn't that what what everyone does?).
Let's examine the lyric:
Nevermind. I have no idea what it means. "tell them all they'll love in my shadow." Just listen to the song again. Feel your life changing? Feel your world being saved?
Verdict: Aliens.
Next Song (from a different record, lots of smiling on the cover): 'Darkness on the Edge of Gastown'. Homage to Springsteen? Maybe. Probably. But still--See, trying to save the world.
Ok, so this song is not my favorite. But then again, 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' is not my favorite Springsteen record either. Coincidence? I think not (phrase coined).
BUT….going back to examine the lyric….more Alien evidence:
--->"She has too much neon. It's hanging off the bone." Neon, hanging off the bone? Alien for sure.
--->"Tell her that I can see the future. Tell her that her future is bleak." Seeing into the future? Only aliens can do that.
Lastly…'Coma Complacency' (from same smiling cover record).
I absolutely love two chord songs. There are so few of them, but all two chord songs seem to have life and freedom in the simplicity. I tried to think of other two cord songs to reference here, but I can only think of ones that I wrote in college (I never had that certain guitar-talent necesary to write anything other than two chord songs...) and there's no way that we need to go near there. Ok, so there are a few more chords in this song, but the vast majority of the song is sung to two strong, fuzzy chords. And the lyric:
--->"Hey hey hey heyheyheyhey". Well thought out. Massively impacting. Here to rescue the world. Japandroids. Listen to them. They'll change you're life.
Final verdict: Alien. Japandroids. They will find you.
wadelover
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Up next...Japandroids, Part 2. Stay tuned.
...by the way, all of our real parenting wins can be attributed to Jen. I let kids ride down stairs on mattresses and play with their friends on the roof. She's really the one doing all the work in our family.
She is the best one of the best ones, for sure.
