Send "Japandroids " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Post-Nothing pumped fists, swilled beers, and ogled girls with the unbridled enthusiasm of youth, but on it Japandroids also viewed the future as something daunting. Maybe Brian King and David Prowse still worry about dying and being away from home, but now they're facing something more mundane and knowable: following a record that catapulted them to indie fame. This year, the duo will continue to release 7" singles culled from material written during the Post-Nothing sessions in addition to No Singles, a collection of two out-of-print EPs (2007's All Lies and 2008's Lullaby Death Jams). And while it's a fun peek into Japandroids' developmental process, don't expect anything more from this release.Granted, Japandroids sound like the same band that made Post-Nothing, if occasionally less reliant on fuzz tones. Prowse often forgoes time-keeping for drum-on-your-dashboard fills while King bashes away in Drop-D tuning, which allows you to power chord with one finger. And No Singles engages new fans with its best stuff up front. Even for Japandroids, "Darkness on the Edge of Gastown" is bluntly composed, little more than one chord alternately bludgeoned and left to dissonantly ring before a coda that stresses tension where later songs would lean on catharsis....full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| Because Japandroids are such a likable band, and because having to follow-up on the promise of a debut LP as blogospherically hyped as Post-Nothing (2009) is never an enviable task, I’ve rarely been as concerned about the potential failure or success of an album as I continue to be about this band’s still-forthcoming second. It’s just that their debut was so wide-eyed, so raucously and joyously hopeful, that their possible destinations—wearing themselves thin with a retread, maybe, or hiring star production talent and over-extending themselves—are pitfalls I want them to avoid so badly. Given that Japandroids have opted to spend 2010 releasing a steady stream of new 7” singles instead of a proper LP, it seems they’re greeting future endeavors with some trepidation of their own. So in lieu of a follow-up, here we have No Singles, Polyvinyl’s premium compilation of two early and out-of-print EPs. This release is something of a marketable safe-bet: Japandroids can justify further touring by getting thrown back into the indie-public consciousness for another fifteen minutes, but because this isn’t new material even negative reviews necessarily re-qualify Post-Nothing as a comparative improvement, meaning the band still comes out unscathed. Labels and bands and PR people love this sort of thing because they get a new product without new material consequences — so even though No Singles isn’t especially good this review serves to remind you that Japandroids are still intensely likable and Post-Nothing is still great. How No Singles ends up functioning is pretty much exactly how these sorts of retrospective re-releases implicitly promise they will: the two five-song EPs which make up the release, 2007’s All Lies and 2008’s Lullaby Death Jams, show Japandroids stumbling through relative infancy. What that means is that No Singles sounds more or less like last year’s Post-Nothing, only slighter, or a little less sure of itself. Which, again, is what I suspect to be the core of this album’s appeal: it satisfies the desires of fans eager for more unheard Japandroids material, but, more than that, it lends Post-Nothing and the band in general some much-needed biographical context. It fleshes out the back story of a band nobody knew anything about before last Spring, which makes them seem more developed—suddenly they’re a band with a history, not nobodies riding the success of a one-off fluke....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| Canadian noise-rock duo Japandroids may be one of a growing band of two-piece outfits that sound like a train colliding with an oil tanker - see also No Age, Wavves and of course scene grandaddies Lightning Bolt - yet as last year's excellent debut long player Post-Nothing demonstrated, they're also partial to writing the odd tune to go with it. Listening back to their back catalogue, that wasn't always the case, as this revisit through those embryonic days will testify. Having initially formed the band back in 2006, the duo of Brian King and David Prowse didn't hang about too long before embarking on their first recording. The five tracks that went on to become the All Lies EP coupled with those of its successor, Lullaby Death Jams, are all included on No Singles, and while there's no mistaking Japandroids displaying a lot of early promise back in the day, it would be fair to say they've taken gargantuan steps in terms of development between these releases and the aforementioned Post-Nothing. If anything, the majority of these songs, particularly those off that first EP, represent a band learning to walk from a musical perspective. While obviously brimming with ideas, King and Prowse still hadn't quite discovered a formula to convey their wares to a feverishly devouring audience at this point. What this means is that the cacophonous likes of 'Couture Suicide' and 'Coma Complacency' sound somewhat unfinished, like half-formed thought processes waiting for a surge of inspiration. That neither of these remain as part of the band's live set probably speaks for itself....full text |
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