There’s plenty to explain going into Fate & Alcohol, which might be the last thing you’d expect someone to say about a Japandroids record. Then again, none of that context is particularly necessary to grasp its impact as the last Japandroids record: they’re still a band – one wishes the sentence could end right there – that’s always headed for the rush over anything else in their music, even as singer-guitarist Brian King’s songwriting became more narrative-driven over the years. You still don’t need much more than to hit play – or hear the songs live, though that’s no longer in the books – to get the thrill. As far as themes go, the new album’s title provides a decent summation. So what if it’s been seven years since the duo’s last album, and many fans had already assumed it was over? “Tune in tomorrow, tune out tonight,” King advises on ‘Fugitive Summer’. Fate & Alcohol is here for both.
But as final records go, it feels neither like a truly back-to-basics nor a proper farewell. It’s not a triumphant send-off, and it’s not a record that sounds like it’s reaching for that title. The bulk of the material was written between 2017 and 2020, when the changes that have come to define their lives – for King, that would be sobriety and the prospect of fatherhood – hadn’t fully settled in yet. “I hate that my only contribution to music thus far has been murky and I would really love to make at least one record with a clear head,” King said in his first interview in years. “But I worry about falling back into old habits. Once was enough, I can’t put my family through that again.” That means we get a Japandroids record that’s gloriously in the middle of it all, one that doesn’t attempt to rewrite their history or turn the page over but can’t bear to stay in the same place. It’s rousing, exuberant, and achingly self-aware.
If you’ve ever listened to Japandroids, one of these last words will stick out. The band has always been self-aware in their own way – it’s a defining trait of what’s come to be known as “dudes rock” – but it’s not just funny. It leaves a sting. Sure, you get a song called ‘A Gaslight Anthem’, but you also get lines like, “Oh, they so serious ‘bout you/ Acting all mysterious/ Not knowing you’re not running away, just going.” Fed up with being perceived as an elusive artist making escapist music, King charts a new beginning that earnestly centers on love as both the thing that fuels the songs and, ironically, lights up a world outside of everything they represent. “No known drink and no known drug could ever hold a candle to your love,” King sang on the penultimate track on 2017’s Near to the Wild Heart of Life, and until he finally takes the shot on closer ‘All Bets Are Off’, Fate & Alcohol is basically about seeing that revelation through. Japandroids aren’t oblivious to the fact that there’s been such a long gap; they take stock of it. But they also make it sound like that was just yesterday.
The tuning out comes first on Fate & Alcohol – the first three songs kickstart the record with breakneck ferocity, indulging in old habits that make you look like hell (but sound like fire). But it’s not quite so straightforward: ‘D&T’ snatches the euphoric high right out of our hands, making it sound more like a self-exorcism than catharsis. And while ‘Alice’ treads familiar territory in terms of its romance, David Prowse’s drumming mounts up tension in a way that locks you into the storytelling. But it’s later – when King, for the first time, is really tuning into the mornings after – that the nuance of his songwriting comes to light. “Sometimes silence says it all,” he offers on ‘Chicago’, then can’t help but cut through it: “Thing about love, I know it when I see it/ So spare me the bullshit, it’s plain to see.” ‘Upon Sober Reflection’ recognizes that sobriety isn’t just about introspection but the ability to see beyond one’s own self, which it does by adopting the other person’s perspective. And while all build-up on ‘Positively 34th Street’ is bent on his narrativizing, it’s her words in response that punch through one of the album’s most exhilarating choruses.
Recorded with longtime collaborator Jesse Gander, Fate & Alcohol splits the difference between the raw, restless abandon of Japandroids’ early work and the ambitious experimentation of Near to the Wild Heart of Life – though it offsets its youthful tendencies not with synths or ballads but by exercising restraint. What it doesn’t attempt is tying up loose ends or serving up any kind of explanation as to why it had to go down this way. Well, except maybe once: “Time is but a wind, blowing from whereabouts unknown/ Us towards each other, and always, away from home,” King declares on ‘Positively 34th Street’. As the years and tears pile up, it all becomes too much to straighten out. Japandroids are over, but the night, at the end of Fate & Alcohol, is far from it: no fireworks seeing us off this time, just the sparkle of possibility. Beginning again.
