Project Description

JAPANDROIDS

@ The Rosemount Hotel, WA

19/07/17 (Live Review)

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Did you ever as kid hurtle down a steep hill at break neck speed in a go-kart, wheels shaking – threatening to fall off, the kart creaking and screaming against the strain? It felt like you were about to head into oblivion but then you got to the bottom with adrenalin coursing through your veins and feeling completely alive. This is what it’s like listening to the Japandroids.

On first impressions, last night’s concert at The Rosemount Hotel was a crashing discord of cymbals and drums, a chaotic urgent thrashing of guitars, a set pestered by technical issues and a singer whose skinny jeans defied all laws of physics. Gigs like these are unruly and walk a fine line between unabashed grittiness and crude delivery, however, Japandroids managed, on the whole, to err on the right side.

The boys from Vancouver Brian King (guitar, vocals) and David Prowse (drums, vocals) are a dynamic duo even if their entrance was less than low-key (wandering out on stage like they were the techs), and they’re not big believers in banter (Prowse calling out the crowd for not seeing support act Foam, “We’ll you’ll live and learn”). The lure of Japandroids has always been revelatory, ragged and frenetic garage-rock that is all inclusive to its audience. Their 2012 release Celebration Rock was all of these things but as King said, four years had passed and there was new work to deliver.

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Japandroid

Japandroid @ Rosemount Hotel // Photo – Josefin Stolt Westling

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The title track of their new album Near To The Wild Heart Of Life opened the set and is their most friendly pop-rock song with its watery, “I used to be good but now I’m bad”. By the time the song ended, Prowse and King were rustled up, with sweat already starting to bead as if they’d were at the end of the set rather than the beginning, but you gotta see these guys play. 2009’s Heart Sweats had Prowse attacking the drums like he was calling people to arms with King leading the charge. King like a punk lizard king had such a veracious style in playing it looked like he was conducting his own personal exorcism with a Fender as his crucifix – as it was during Fire’s Highway. Throughout as King claimed the stage and Prowse keep the beat and provided the song’s calls, it all felt like it was on the verge of tipping over yet never actually doing so.

It’s heart-racing stuff even though it took the crowd several songs to shake off the chill of the freezing night. All the elements were there; the marching drum beats from True Love and A Free Life of Free Will, the atmospheric build of I’m Sorry (For Not Finding You Sooner) and Midnight To Morning but it’s the rebel calls that define the Japandroids sound and a number of those songs fell just shy of landing a knockout punch. Evil’s Sway should’ve had the crowd heaving but despite the energy from the stage, the crowd looked like they were happy to rock on their heels rather than cause bedlam. Some of this could be attributed to a number of tech issues which befell the band such as blowing two Hiwatt heads early in the set, which King described as kinda of sexy, and a mic that needed to be swapped out twenty minutes later.

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Japandroids

Japandroid @ Rosemount Hotel // Photo – Josefin Stolt Westling

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Still, the mood of the last third of the set picked up, heavy with crowd favourites like the glorious The Nights of Wine and Roseswhich elicited many a fist pump with its beer-lit hollering and jubilant embrace of rock. King’s voice may have become shredded by Continuous Thunder but it held out enough to give a bone-rattling rendition of The House That Heaven Built. A mosh pit ensued, and a crowd was imbued with a sense of reckless freedom, and two Canadians from Vancouver who had to work for it with a Perth crowd, showed what it means to really celebrate rock.

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AMNPLIFY – DB

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