Review Summary: The duo brings everything they’re about to the album format once again, and even though the confines of an album can’t express everything they’re about as powerfully as the duo can in live performances, it’s still fun as hell.
Let’s be honest, Japandroids looked forward to the 2 year tour following their debut album a lot more than they actually did recording it in the studio. The sole reason they’re in the music business is because they simply love performing their music, which is music made to be best performed live. They don’t want to feel as if they’re containing and limiting the volume and energy of their live songs with studio recordings and refining.
For good measure, Japandroids figure that the only way Celebration Rock is going to top their debut Post-Nothing, is if it follows the same strategy they use in making each concert they do best the preceding one, and that strategy is simply raising their personal standard bar of how loud and noisy they can make their music.
The duo cram this album full of songs best suited being heard in an arena, where all the fist-pump inducing anthems would exhibit the extent of their purpose in the raw element of rush. Though, they don’t abide by making the anthems transfer over to an album format in a way that they retain the same effect that they are intended to reach when performed live.
This is the second time around Japandroids have done this, and all they’ve really changed this time around is fueling up the drive to a point where it’s an even more simplified and bare approach to the vibe they want to instill. This can make their material seem like a more basic version of the same thing that was heard before, and without the rush of a concert aiding it, these songs can feel a more dumbed down and streamlined version of the same thing. Deteriorating the impact as expectations are met, but not exceeded.
This is only a minor flaw however, as this record is still brings the punk out of rock, and the rock out of punk, all with such exuberant noise and head banging power, that regardless of if it’s more of the same, it’s still impressive that this much marvelous power can come from only two people.
