Review Summary: Youth, Revisited.
Adulthood is a confusing prospect. It seems after four years of college, we're suddenly expected to drop everything we lived for the past 10 years of our lives and settle down. One day you're a young, stupid college kid with nothing to prove and everything to ruin, the next you're a functioning member of society who's not getting sympathy from anyone. If you want to keep living that lifestyle, you're stuck in your youth, aging physically but not mentally. If you give it up for the pressures of the real world, you're no better than the countless before you.
Japandroids, on Post-Nothing, are stuck in the middle of that conundrum. Between the drinking anthems and songs of youth there lies a healthy dosage of naivety, frustration, and regret. This mental middle ground is best summed up on a line in the song "Wet Hair" where both Brian King and David Prowse sing aloud "These girls are all Bikini Kill, we need a ride to Bikini Island". It's a simple line that carries with it a sense of immaturity, Bikini Kill being a radical feminist group back in the 90's. The song itself seems lusting over something he can't quite attain, something he even feels guilty for liking in the first place. Throughout, this album is full of self-assuring lines similar to that, where Japandroids are making up for something they lack, or once had and lost.
The trials of life are briefly seen on "Young Hearts Spark Fire", where Brian seems to be giving his answer to the call of adulthood. He screams "I don't wanna worry about dying, I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls." Can you really argue with that? Is it not something we make our own in our everyday lives? Are we just as guilty as the Japandroids are? It's hard to retort that statement, because at it's core, there's a valid statement about life in there. Be young while we still are, be free before we're chained to jobs or places, why worry about what lies ahead? The idea he poses is that conforming to adulthood means being content with death. Is he really wrong? Or just naive?
On the song "Crazy/Forever", the naivety is placed in the spotlight. The song starts simple, never really goes anywhere, but still sticks as one of the most memorable on the album. Over hard hitting cymbal crashes and a simple riff, David sings "We'll stick together forever/Stay sick together/Be crazy forever". This youthful attitude can only last so long before it starts to lose it's luster. The following song "Sovereignty" carries these themes, with even more youthful, ultimately empty promises.
"It's raining in Vancouver
But I don't give a ***
'Cause I'm in love with you tonight"
However, on the final track "I Quit Girls", it seems the whole album becomes clear. It's not just an album about being young and stupid, it's not an album even about the person David or Brian loved, it's about themselves. It's an album about sobering up the morning after, realizing how utterly useless we are at analyzing situations, friendships, or love. Perhaps it's fitting that this song contains the best build up on the entire album. Another simple 4-chord riff, a build up on the floor tom, cymbal crash. Simultaneously, this song is the realization that childhood does indeed end. No matter how hard we try to keep our youth, or keep our first love's flame burning, it's all going to end. The nightly kisses and I-love-you's will stop, the perfect picture of the one you think is so right for you fades, everything becomes grey.
Love stops being this grand entity and starts becoming a piece of every day life.
Tragic.
Post-Nothing is, at it's surface, a youthful cry from two guys who seem to be falling into the depths of adulthood. Dig deeper, though, and you will find an incredible observation of not just the Japandroids' own past, but an event that all of us are going to face at one time or another - growing up.
However, in true Japandroids fashion, I have but one thing to say to that:
Bull. ***.
