#1 - Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Polyvinyl, 2012

I don’t know if you’re likely to find a more aptly titled album than Celebration Rock. This is truth in advertising right here. The album opens with the sound of fireworks and closes with the sound of fireworks, and in between are eight of the most fist-pumping, chest-hair-growing, emotionally charged anthems you’ve ever heard. This album kicks so much ass that I can barely contain myself writing about it. I’m not even listening to the album right now, but just thinking about it gets me fired up. This is what we talk about when we talk about the Album of the Decade. This is what we talk about when we talk about the Album of the Century.

I chronicled my feelings about Japandroids in the write-up for Near to the Wild Heart of Life, but I want to link to the concert review I did of their show at the Bottleneck in Lawrence for the Pitch because it’s important to recognize when you have made a mistake (and to publicly shame yourself for it, I guess). I feel like I deserve lashings. I feel like I should have my headphones taken away and my Spotify membership cancelled. It’s the greatest musical sin I ever committed. But I came around, and I’m glad I did because no album has given me as much lasting enjoyment as Celebration Rock. It’s an album Jenny and I share, and if we have a song, I’d say it’s probably “Continuous Thunder” because it’s hard to think of a more romantic song (at least in the fist-pumping anthem division). It’s my song of the decade, and it’s my favorite song of all time full stop. I’ll take that one over any other. It’s one of the greatest love songs of all time and if you disagree I will fight you.

While putting together my favorite songs of the decade list, I realized that the Top 10 could very well have 4 or 5 tracks from this album. They’re all great, and the only nit I have to pick with Celebration Rock is that I feel like instead of a cover of the Gun Club’s “For the Love of Ivy” (which is an excellent palate cleanser that perfectly preps you for the hit after hit after hit after hit nature of the Side B) they should have included an original but even then that doesn’t really hurt the album at all. “Younger Us” did land in my Top 10 because that song is undeniable and has one of my favorite lines of the decade: “Give me that night you were already in bed/ Said fuck it, got up to drink with me instead.” It’s like one’s early twenties encapsulated in a couplet. Such a beautiful love song to being young and careless and near to the wild heart of life. That’s two monster hits on one album, hits that a lesser band could coast on for their entire career, but you’ve also got “The House that Heaven Built,” which might be the most fist-pumping of the  bunch, and “Adrenaline Nightshift” and that’s JUST SIDE B. “The Nights of Wine and Roses,” “Fire’s Highway,” and “Evil’s Sway” all kick all kinds of ass as well, but this record is built like a New Japan Pro-Wrestling card: It builds to the most dramatic moment and the payoff of the whole sticks with you forever. Celebration Rock is my platonic ideal of what a record should be. It’s full of life and personality, it has its heart sewn to its sleeve, and it doesn’t wink and nod about playing music with emotions built for arenas with a sound built for bars.

Celebration Rock came in at #2 on my Favorite Albums of 2012 list, and that is a decision I have always regretted. I thought about retconning it, but something felt wrong about that since the year end lists are meant to be a snapshot of what I was actually listening to (and Father John Misty’s Fear Fun was definitely the album that year). But as this album continued to take hold of me in 2013, and stuck around for 2014, 2015, 2016, etc, it became a foregone conclusion that this was going to be the album of the decade. It’s an album I still listen to at least once every couple of weeks when I just need to put something on in the car and it has never come close to wearing out its welcome. Quite the contrary, actually, as my love for it grows even fonder upon each successive listen. I am so obsessed with this album it sort of makes me understand how evangelicals feel about Jesus. These are the hymns that speak to my soul. This is the album I want you to play when I’m on my deathbed as I am getting ready to face oblivion.

#14 - Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life

Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life

Polyvinyl, 2017

I’ll preface this by saying that we will talk about Celebration Rock later, but it’s important to know where this album stands in relation to that one. I still feel deep regret making Father John Misty’s Fear Fun my favorite album of 2012, not because it’s a bad album, but because that album doesn’t hold up nearly as well. Yes, this is in regard to a list that is essentially for myself, but man it haunts me. But the thing about year end lists--and a thing I’ve learned to live with--is that they present a true snapshot of what that year’s listening looked like. Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is another great example of an album that was my favorite in the moment, but has since been surpassed. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the staying power an album is going to have until you find yourself listening to it three years later and loving it more than you did in the first place.

The thing Japandroids have going against them is their dumb band name. It’s so bad, and even worse if you take into account how sublimely outstanding their music is. It’s a reason why I was hesitant to get into their debut Post-Nothing, and it might have contributed to a horribly misguided pan I wrote about one of their Lawrence shows in The Pitch. And lo, they overcame that because they write the purest, most white-hot anthem rock of their generation, and Near to the Wild Heart of Life is their most complete record. It’s an album about adventure. About leaving town, about missing home, and living life on the road. A classic tour album, sure, but done with Japandroids flair for brilliant hooks and even more brilliant fist-pumping anthems. What’s cool about Near to the Wild Heart of Life is that they shift gears a few times into quieter territory (by Japandroids standards, at least) which makes the album a different experience than Celebration Rock but one that is worth revisiting a thousand times over.