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Artist Interviews
Q&A: Japandroids
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 2 September 2009
Japandroids formed in 2006 when Brian King and David Prowse’s musical messing around started to take more serious shape. Originally planning to find a singer and become a trio, they gave up on that plan when the reality of having a lead singer proved too unpleasant, and settled for sharing vocal duties. Their debut album, ‘Post-Nothing’, has become a bit of an indie underground hit this year, and finally gets an official UK release on 7 Sep, via Polyvinyl. We spoke to David to ask our Same Six Questions.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Well we started jamming together after Brian moved to Vancouver, when he finished university. That was about four years ago. It was pretty relaxed at first, just hanging out and playing whenever we felt like it. We started being more of a “real” band – playing shows and recording and taking it a bit more seriously – a year after that. Our obsession with playing steadily grew from there, up to the point where we were playing almost every day. It’s been like that for a solid couple of years now.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
The album came about pretty organically as a collection of songs that we had been working on for quite a while. I think from a lyrical standpoint it is definitely a product of where we are at in our lives as two guys in their mid 20s – falling in and out of love, growing up, hating your home town, etc. Musically, it was inspired and created by a lot of long nights in a sweaty little rehearsal studio in a basement in east Vancouver.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
There isn’t really a magic formula for how we write. Basically, Brian will have an idea in his head and he’ll come into the jamspace and play something and then we’ll play it together a bunch of times until it becomes a Japandroids song. Sometimes he has a very specific idea and we figure out how to play it pretty quick. Other times he brings something in that is in very early stages of development and it grows and mutates over a long time to become a Japandroids song.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
We both listen to a lot of music so our list of influences is pretty extensive. Hot Snakes, Jesus And Mary Chain, Hüsker Dü, The Constantines, Mclusky, (old) Weezer, Bruce Springsteen, The Replacements – I could list another fifty bands but I think you get the idea. We don’t sound like any of those bands specifically. We’re more just a mash up of all of them (and a whole bunch more), as played by two guys who don’t really know what they’re doing.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
It gets better. I promise.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
We’re really excited to be touring all over North America right now, and we have plans to head to the UK in the fall, and hopefully the rest of Europe and elsewhere next year. Our ambition is world domination!
MORE>> www.japandroids.com
