Japandroids

On October 18 Japandroids will release Fate & Alcohol, their fourth and final full-length. Written in part while the duo—drummer-vocalist David Prowse and guitarist-vocalist Brian King—were touring behind their 2017 ANTI- debut, Near to the Wild Heart of Life, the album is at once a return to form and a thrilling step forward, a monument to the chemistry they’ve honed over nearly two decades side-by-side. It is their finest work to date, the sound of a band bowing out at the peak of their powers. Prowse and King met in the early 2000s as students at The University of Victoria in British Columbia. They quickly bonded over a shared love of Wolf Parade and Constantines, bands whose earnest, heart-on-sleeve indie rock would become a blueprint for Japandroids, which they’d eventually form in 2006 as the two found themselves both living and working in Vancouver. “From the moment we started playing,” Prowse says, “there was something that felt special to both of us.”