Japandroids Announce Final Album, Share New Song “Chicago”: Listen

Japandroids have announced a new album, and it will be the band’s last. Fate & Alcohol, the follow-up to 2017’s Near to the Wild Heart of Life, is out October 18 via Anti-. Leading the LP is the new song “Chicago.” Find it below.

Guitarist and vocalist Brian King and drummer and vocalist David Prowse met as students, in the mid-2000s, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. They relocated to Vancouver and released their first Japandroids album, Post-Nothing, in 2009. Their second album, 2012’s Celebration Rock, was released to critical acclaim, and King and Prowse toured extensively in support of the record. They took a break before returning with Near to the Wild Heart of Life.

Discussing the duo’s final album, in a press statement, Brian King said:

On our last record we wanted to broaden the definition of a Japandroids song, and purposely left our demos quite open and malleable so that we had more flexibility to experiment in the studio. At the time, this approach was new and exciting, and inspired us to be bolder, to take more chances. We were aiming for a more cinematic take on our signature sound. This time, we made certain that every song ripped in our jam space before [longtime recording engineer] Jesse [Gander] ever heard it. If you listen to our first demo of “Chicago,” it’s obviously much rougher than what you hear on record, but it’s all there. Even on a blown-out iPhone recording, the energy was obvious, and the feeling cut through loud and clear.

Read about Celebration Rock at No. 113 in “The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s.”