Recently, we welcomed Japandroids back to Australia eagerly – in a short amount of time, the Canadian rock duo had fans in a spin with a brand new live show indicating one hell of a new album was ahead in the forthcoming Near To The Wild Heart of Life. Following their Fairgrounds Festival set, Dave and Brian caught up with us in Sydney to chat about their return to the road with new music, their favourite albums of 2016 and skydiving.
“I really love Angel Olsen‘s record,” Dave mentions, as they note their favourite records of the year. “We got to see her a couple times on this run in Australia actually, we crossed paths a couple of times. She puts on a great show, I love that record. That’s a big one. I’ve been listening to Frank Ocean‘s record a tonne recently, I love that record.”
“I think it’s great,” Brian agrees. “He’s kind of on the same timeline as us, it seems like he put out his last record around the same time that we put out Celebration Rock and then he put this one out just before ours.”
On their Australian trip (their first in over two years) for Fairgrounds and the headline shows in Melbourne and Sydney that were to follow, Japandroids open up about the hard task of basking in the Australian summertime and introducing new material to crowds for the first time.
“It’s been really exciting to be back on the road again,” Dave says. “It’d been three years since we’d been on a stage, by the time we started touring for this record. Most of all, it’s just exciting to be back on stage playing for people. We’re really excited about this new record, so it’s been a lot of fun playing these new songs. There’s definitely a dichotomy, in terms of audience reaction. I don’t think it’s because people don’t like the new material, it’s just [that] people haven’t heard it yet. They’re paying attention and being quite studious when we play these new jams…”
Near To The Wild Heart of Life is out on January 27th.
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