In Sydney last month, we caught up with two of our favourite Canadians: Brian and Dave of Japandroids. While we reflected on their recent shows in the country, focus soon turned to their highly anticipated new album (out this week), Near To The Wild Heart of Life. After a few years completely out of the spotlight, the rock duo came back into our lives brandishing some brilliant new music indicative of a hot new chapter for the band, about to be broken into.
“We had a very clear idea of what we wanted to do, generally speaking.” Brian says of the album’s creation. “We made a couple of records that were very similar; similar songs and [there was] a similar vibe throughout the whole record. It was more closer to [being] a lot of the same thing, in a good way. It’s music designed for a certain time or a certain place, or a certain kind of experience. Not necessarily taking you on a journey, maybe emotionally or sonically, the way that a lot of the great rock records that we love actually do.”
“There was very much a desire this time, to expand on the songs we wrote and the kinds of sounds we had; experimenting with the tempos of the songs and the arrangements of the songs, the different themes of the songs. Instead of writing eight or ten of the same thing, trying to think about every one more, individually. Give it its own identity and sonic character.”
Dave agrees, admitting that the release that comes with taking creative liberty on the album was one that drove the process as a whole.
“I think we had a better idea of what we didn’t want to do, than what we did want to do, on this new record. One thing we really didn’t want to do, was repeat ourselves. There are some songs that do feel like they could go on Celebration Rock or could fit pretty seamlessly within a set list of all those older Japandroids songs, but we really wanted to expand beyond that as well.”
“We weren’t going to force songs to sound different but at the same time, we were very much interested in seeing where some of these different ideas we had could go if we just gave ourselves the total freedom to follow them and see where they took us.”
Check out the full interview below!
Japandroids’ new album, Near To The Wild Heart of Life, is out January 27th.
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