#japandroids

[nobodycallsmemaurice]

if you are one of the 91 people on earth who listened to more Japandroids in 2025 than i did, hit me up

[dreamingspiral]

it was bedlam in my bed that night and like a silent scream

my body broke out in a sweat from seeing you in dreams

you called out to me

i sang back to you

and all I remember was the sound of it being like all hell breaking loose

[imaconnoisseurofroads]

Waking up early did, in fact, result in feeling a sense of accomplishment. Plus, I stopped by BMV and got this VMP pressing of Celebration Rock.

[groovesnjams]

"Chicago" by Japandroids

DV:

If this was 2012 and Japandroids dropped a song called "Chicago" it's entirely possible that MG and I would have lost our minds. "The House that Heaven Built" and Celebration Rock soundtracked so many of our nights out in Logan Square or Andersonville or Lakeview in that period, either in fact or in principle. It was an era of buying beers based on their cost-to-ABV ratio, of smoking endless cigarettes in alleyways as if they'd provide shelter from the sub-zero weather, of staying out until sunrise. A time filled with mistakes we knew we were making. But times change, and so did we, and we were a lot cooler on the band's follow-up work, to the extent that a dozen years later I'm not sure I can actually call a Japandroids song named after our city GNJ bait (not least because neither of us actually lives in the city currently.)

But while I don't think either of us are looking for a song to inspire the kind of bad behavior that "Fire's Highway" et all once did, Japandroids aren't really making that kind of song anymore either. And "Chicago" does kind of hit, especially once I stop expecting an actual chorus and notice that Japandroids have left plenty of space for a crowd to shout out, "We call it like we see it in Chicago." A motto I've never heard but like sure, why not. Maybe they're not shouting quite as loud as they used to, but maybe they still recognize the impulse. Maybe I do too.

MG:

There's a real problem with Brian King's vocals on "Chicago." A line like "Sorry, baby, we call it like we see it in Chicago" is supposed to be shouted louder than the lines preceding it, not hollowed out and delivered plainspoken. He's never been a technically gifted singer, but comparing "Chicago" to 2012's "Continuous Thunder," which uses the same blunt vocal style, it's clear his voice is just shot. Understandable! He sung recklessly and that was what was so beautiful about that era of Japandroids -- it was always meant to be a brief but powerful fire of emotion and excess. And now it's viscerally over. It hurts to hear him thin and weak, it feels like his inability to sing forcefully has extended to his lyrics, which lack the snapshot specificity he was once so gifted at conjuring. There's no gut punch truth at the heart of "Chicago," instead a sort of wistful longing to go back and be preserved in amber hangs over the song. At this point, you just had to be there. As a teen, I was insanely jealous of anyone who got to experience The Replacements in real time because all I could do was read about how fragile, human, and alive they were in their brief, transcendent career. Japandroids will be someone's Replacements and to that person I can confirm, they really were that special.

[sad-sappy-sucker]

Japandroids - "Chicago"

[pretendpopstar]

Celebration Rock by Japandroids

[aprizeforfeeling]

[strangledeggs]

Everyone's nostalgia is different, "monoculture" is fake, blah blah blah, but I think one reason that the ubiquity of Mr. Brightside pisses me off is because this song exists. To me, this far better captured the emotional highs of being a millennial (sort of?) teenager/young adult, and it just feels like it does everything Mr. Brightside is trying to but better - like, it's just MORE, even to the point that it sounds contradictory: more poetic, more punk, sloppier, but somehow more technically impressive, louder, more intense, more tender, but also more stand-offish. The Killers have always been second-rate Springsteen wannabes (except in those brief moments where they're slightly-more-interesting second-rate new wave wannabes); these guys might have been a flash in the pan, but that flash was truly dazzling for at least those first couple albums and it feels like a cosmic injustice that this song doesn't have the status Mr. Brightside does instead.