Goodbyes are never a simple matter. The planned ones, then, create a very dense network of bitterness intertwined with expectations that are difficult to disentangle. This is exactly what happens with this “Fate & Alcohol”, Japandroids' fourth album, with which the Vancouver duo decided to say goodbye to their fans after almost twenty years of experience. With a first decade lived to the max: two true indie-rock classics of the new millennium (“Post Nothing” of 2009 and “Celebration Rock” of 2012) full of anthem from three chords to remember and some incendiary live shows that defining them as an exhilarating and cathartic experience is an understatement. “Near To The Wild Heart Of Life” from 2017, however, showed the cord of inspiration shortened and the enthusiasm of the beginnings headed towards a melancholy extinction. So Brian King (vocals and guitar) and David Prowse (vocals and drums) decided, perhaps rightly, to call it quits.
However, “Fate & Alcohol” is not the farewell album one expects, full of a sense of tragedy and epic sunset. Instead, it could be, net of a few twilight and melancholic moments (which have never been lacking in the duo's discography), the very normal album of a band in the middle of its life.
It is both the worst and the best way to break up and leave us. The worst because the feeling is that the formula was anything but dead, perhaps just dormant. The best because the most honest: leaving us doing what we have always done.
Thus, between some episodes less successful than the other (“Fugitive Summer”, really too banal with its babe sung profusely, and “D&T”), we say goodbye to Brian and David with a handful of memorable choruses between our lips: that of “Eye Contact High”, that of “Chicago” and that of “Upon Sober Reflection”. Programmatically inebriated by the mess full of tenderness and tension that a single distorted guitar and drums can make (“Alice”), engaged in an imaginary mosh pit (“A Gaslight Anthem”) or in a breakneck race (“One Without The Other” ).
“All Bets Are Off” starts off calmly and then lets the career credits roll in a sonic crescendo of effected guitars and the usual rising choruses. Thus ends the album of a band that would like to shout goodbye, but seems to whisper a hello, turn and go away. Who knows if he won't retrace his steps.
02/11/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
