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Critic Reviews
100
While most indie messiahs tend to wear out their halos once the hype dies down, this duo’s debut seems engineered for maximum replays.
3y
100
The duo’s debut full-length, Post Nothing, is a starry-eyed blast of Clinton-era crunch, each of its eight songs a sweaty salve for quarter-life miseries, or better yet, girl problems.
15y
90
Post-Nothing is the perfect soundtrack to the fear and excitement of youth's impulsive action.
12y
90
Regardless of classification, Japandroids have created something pure, something without pretense and without any concern for how smart or cool they will sound. In the underground, where status is more important than comfort, Post-Nothing is a beacon of safety, a true rock record for everyone.
15y
90
Post Nothing is the perfect antidote to today's alt-folk movement that seems to be fast approaching saturation point. It's gritty and it's lo-fi. It's under-produced and fuzzy. It's intense and it's raw. It's a straight up garage-punk rock album...It's catchy... and it's... Well, it's noisy. But, more than any of that though, It's. Really. Fucking. Good.
11y
86
Through all of their drunken ranting, clamoring for girls, and rocking like they’ve got a whole party behind them even though they are only two, at the heart of Japandroids lies two boys, scared to grow up, and not forgetting this fact no matter how wrapped up in girls and partying they might tell us they are.
12y
85
Obviously young, occasionally dumb and certainly full of fun, it is a joyous snapshot of the aspirations, fears and concerns of a certain time of life that will chime with many and be appreciated even by those for whom those days are long gone.
11y
83
Guitar/drums band from Vancouver makes terminally catchy music played with punk's enthusiasm and velocity that makes you feel like joining in to bash along.
15y
80
Yes, there’s technically more instrumental breadth in most episodes of Sesame Street, but this is a deeply, troublingly emotional record.
15y
80
Filled with bounce, bite and surprising cohesion, Post-Nothing is a deceptive little piece that is as much fun as it is subversive.
7y
80
Post-Nothing is their eight-song debut, and it goes by in a flash of infectious, sweaty anthem jams about angsty youth problems, as on the track Sovereignty, where King sings, “It’s raining in Vancouver, but I don’t give a fuck.” You can’t bring these guys down.
2y
80
Their debut is a gale-force riot, a virtual tempest of joyous abandon.
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2y
80
They act apathetic, but they're totally sentimental. Likewise, they're musically proficient even though they're sloppy as hell.
15y
80
Post-Nothing is convincing in its candor to the point of exhaustion.
15y
79
It’s all quite charming and lovely.
11y
75
It’s just a couple of guys having fun, not really caring about what people think of their music; this, coupled with the album’s sheer energy and catchiness, makes it a worthwhile party album.
11y
75
The cacaphonous bursts of garage-rock fuzz on this young Vancouver duo's third album are the stuff of a thousand beer-soaked basement parties — shambolic, sweaty, and happily unrefined.
2y
70
Japandroids have a point of view (young, male, infatuated with the promise of the present) and an M.O. (excellently fuzzed-out garage rock played as if at the apocalypse), but more impressively, they've mastered another secret to swaying the public: confidence without smugness.
15y
70
On their debut disc, Post-Nothing, guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse deliver a rush of fuzzed-out rockers and stoner-metal grooves, plus an awesomely bummed-out drone called "I Quit Girls."
3y
70
Sure, there’s nothing at all novel about young dudes feeling immortal and wanting to get laid, but Japandroids infuse those well-worn tropes with enough energy and songcraft to make it feel refreshing.
15y
60
And after all that build up—from the consistency of the first half to the more straightforward rock in the second, to the epic closing track—the album simply fades out. Where is it going? Post-Nothing? Think about it.
12y
60
They are all solid garage pop tunes, but ultimately the lyrics and the composition are lacking in substance and theme.
15y
60
Maybe it’s a thing of youth. Maybe it’s unfair to put so much weight on a band that still seems to be primarily concerned with girls, making out, getting drunk, girls, late nights, sweaty shows and girls. And hey, I like most of those things as much as the next 20-something, but lately it seems like artists should just be a little more cognizant of the world around them.
8y
60
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this template leaves little room for subtlety, yet what the duo's first lacks in brains it makes up for in sheer noisy exuberance, displaying on Crazy/Forever a common thread with the once majestic ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.
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2y
With Celebration Rock being the bonafide masterpiece that it is, it creates a pretty wide gulf between that album and their debut for me. However, Brian and Dave display great band interplay right out of the gate, and I can definitely hear the seeds of the more optimistic Americana/Punk sound they would later develop on tracks such as "Young Hearts Spark Fire" and "Rockers East Vancouver"
Can't think of Japandroids as being just another very mid garage rock with passable songs. After having listening to their 'classic' albums multiple times over the years, I still get very little out of the band and this album.
There's a solid enough foundation here. The heavy, noisy repetition, often being interrupted by bursts of erratic melodics, is an interesting sound that's well explored in "Post-Nothing's" runtime. Though with the overwhelming sunshine positivity of it all, it feels like a gritty steampunk apocalypse car being driven through a gentrified beach town, and then the said car breaks down. As the bumps this album hits are far too harsh to ignore for me. The writing is wholly ... read more
8/10
exceptional
Fav tracks: The Boys Are Leaving Town, Young Hearts Spark Fire, Wet Hair, Rockers East Vancouver, Heart Sweats, Sovereignty, I Quit Girls
I first heard of Japandroids in the comments of a squeex youtube video reacting to ludwig doing a northernlion impression.
so, thank you to that guy.
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Track List
| 1 | The Boys Are Leaving Town 3:59 | 82 |
| 2 | Young Hearts Spark Fire 5:03 | 84 |
| 3 | Wet Hair 3:09 | 82 |
| 4 | Rockers East Vancouver 4:29 | 79 |
| 5 | Heart Sweats 4:22 | 76 |
| 6 | Crazy/Forever 6:01 | 80 |
| 7 | Sovereignty 3:31 | 79 |
| 8 | I Quit Girls 4:55 | 81 |
Total Length: 35 minutes
Year End Lists
| #3 | / | No Ripcord |
| #7 | / | Slant Magazine |
| #9 | / | Pretty Much Amazing |
| #9 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
| #14 | / | Treble |
| #15 | / | Pitchfork |
| #16 | / | Spin |
| #21 | / | Stereogum |
| #25 | / | A.V. Club |
| #35 | / | PopMatters |
| #39 | / | NME |
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