Flame On! | Japandroids resort to drastic measures to combat the cold temperatures in their rehearsal space.
DETAILS
JAPANDROIDS
w/ No Gold and The Mitts. Starlite Room (10030–102 St). Wed, Jun 24 (9pm). Tickets available through Ticketmaster, Blackbyrd, Listen, Megatunes.
Brian King has spent a lot of time lately talking about the limitations of the Vancouver music scene — indifferent city politicians and a lack of decent venues have inspired the nickname “No Fun City” — but tonight is different. It’s the weekend of the annual Music Waste festival, an eclectic, independent showcase of the city’s various talents. King’s band Japandroids has played the festival every year since it formed in 2006, though this year other things have been keeping him busier than usual.
“I really wanted to go to one of the shows last night,” he says over the phone, “and I spent the whole night working on a FACTOR [Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Records] grant. The perils of being in a band ...”
He’s being modest. True, many bands have to worry about things like booking shows and organizing merchandise and applying for funding. But most don’t have Japandroids’ particular obligations — planning their first massive North American tour, say, or finalizing the international release of their critically acclaimed debut LP, as King (guitars, vocals) and bandmate David Prowse (drums, vocals) are doing for the riotous and completely awesome Post-Nothing.
Rewind even six months, however, and they were just another band entrenched in the local scene, struggling to gain exposure.
“We were so sure we were self-releasing this newest record that I’d actually sent it off to get pressed,” King says. “When Unfamiliar [Records] got in touch with us and said, ‘We want to press your record’ — as stupid as it sounds — I literally had to phone them and say, ‘Stop the presses! Somebody else is going to pay for it.’”
That was just the beginning of a truly remarkable run of good fortune. In March, indie kingmakers Pitchfork Media got hold of “Young Hearts Spark Fire,” a blistering, distortion-soaked track from the forthcoming album, and posted it to their site along with a gushing blurb. When Post-Nothing proper was released in late April, Pitchfork gave them another rave review, naming the album one of the year’s best. It’s the kind of review entire careers have been launched from.
But then, after the very first show in what was meant to be their breakthrough tour, King woke up in Calgary in so much pain that he couldn’t move. Prowse rushed him to the hospital, and within two hours King was being prepped for emergency surgery. He was diagnosed with a perforated ulcer, “which,” he says, “essentially meant that my stomach exploded — there was a big hole in it.” In a chilling way, his good luck continued: the day before, King and Prowse had driven straight from Vancouver to Calgary. Had he been on a barren stretch of highway when it happened, hours from a hospital, he wouldn’t have survived.
Now, six weeks of recovery and one impressive scar later, King and Prowse are ready to try it all again. They’ve just signed an international deal with Polyvinyl Records, and the snowballing online buzz is sure to bring out droves of new fans to their shows.
So do they feel any pressure to live up to expectations? Nah — or not yet, anyway.
“It wasn’t like Pitchfork said, ‘This band has a great single — they’re going to be a great band,’ and now we have to take that pressure into the studio and produce something that lives up to that expectation,” he says. “That’d be hard to do. But our record was already done. Everything we’ve ever recorded and released was all done prior to this notoriety. So we never had to second-guess our sound. As far as we knew, maybe a few hundred people would ever hear this record.
“I’m sure if you ask me this question in a year,” he adds with a chuckle, “when we’re recording our second record, I’m sure I’ll be considerably more concerned about this whole process.”
Post the first comment: (Login or Register)