The Left Coast: Japandroids
// August 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music, The Left Coast
Introducing our newest contributor, Andrew deWaard, with The Left Coast:
Photo credit: Gerald Deo
A weekend overshadowed with the Hughes Blues, it is perhaps not so strange to think of the Japandroids show here in Vancouver Friday night as a similarly nostalgic ‘homecoming’. This is a band that spent 2 years and 2 EPs wandering the wilderness of the largely venue-less (RIP Dick’s on Dicks) Vancouver indie/’weird punk’/lo-fi scene, only to spend the summer of 2009 blowing the hell up, fast. Propelled by a gushing Pitchfork Best New Track and Best New Music, East Vancouver’s (retrospective) pride and joy rapidly rose from the cover of our fair city’s weekly, to woxy darling, to Rolling Stone, and straight to the top: the New York Times has now printed — and ABC News’ Charles Gibson stoicly muttered — the (let’s admit, pretty stupid) word Japandroids. At a Constantines show here in Van a few months back, the Japs’ Young Hearts Spark Fire (mp3) came over the PA and a sizable chunk of the crowd started singing along: this was the new Vancouver Anthem. (Thanks to yours truly, the song briefly made a run for New York Magazine’s Song of the Summer). Oh, and dude had emergency surgery on a perforated ulcer (scar pic!) while they were on tour, a potentially-fatal abrupt stop to a long-awaited and recently resumed North American tour. So it’s been a bit of a summer for the lads, and it was good to have our ‘Rockers East Vancouver‘ back for a night. (more…)
