Japandroids 'Post-Nothing' (Polyvinyl) Released 07/09/09

Now, I don’t condone alcohol consumption, kids. But hopefully many of you will be able to relate to the feeling of being on a complete high due to a few drinks, that sense that you love all of your friends, that everything’s going to be ok, that any impending nasty incident doesn’t really exist. You’re a complete tosser, a failure in life and your left shoe’s beginning to fall off, but you feel completely untouchable. ‘Post-Nothing’ somehow conveys that feeling: intimate joy, for yourself and your loved ones, the ones you’re arm in arm with. United as one, completely deluded but overcome with glee.

This sensation is achieved from just one kit of drums, one fuzzed-up guitar, and two average singing voices, chanting in unison occasionally to add to the enthused euphoria. You can’t enter ‘Post-Nothing’ casually and you really shouldn’t put the record on shuffle. To get complete fulfillment, let ‘The Boys Are Leaving Town’’s melancholy and ferocious pace draw you in, for this is just the beginning of a new chapter, leaving town, with caution and optimism. As things progress, you find yourself nodding along, then beating the nearest inanimate object in time to David Prowse’s drums, then collapsing onto the floor, scatterbrained, overwhelmed. A journey it is, then. And as you follow Prowse and his companion, the ever-present, unbalanced Brian King, on their journey from home, you feel part of the youthful intensity that ‘Post-Nothing’ completely relies on.

Devoid of bullshit and devoid of pretense, this avoids pale, thinly-formed comparisons to more hip, noise-rock contemporary band’s whose location and social network is more important than how they sound. Its highs come in the form of ‘Young Hearts Spark Fire’, a song that contains a lyric to summarise the whole record: “We used to dream, now we only worry about dying, I don’t wanna worry about dying.” So much attitude, so little time to think about anything important, living for the moment like a naive early-teen. Elsewhere, ‘Wet Hair’ demonstrates the most outstanding chord sequence: fuelled with ecstacy and unceasing, it’s something akin to No Age at their finest. And ‘Heart Sweats’ intricately demonstrates the two’s fantastic knack for taking a rhythm, and building and building everything around it with progressive pace and grandiose.

Ultimately, more than anything, ‘Post-Nothing’ is a direct kick in the face towards every musician that sits in corners for hours, pressing their head, asking for inspiration so that they can become inventive and forward-thinking. This record merely puts a tried and tested formula to use and performs it without fault and most importantly, with thoroughgoing spirit.