Japandroids

Behind Born Ruffians' Birthmarks

When a group of best friends lock themselves in a house with a bunch of beer, some firewood and their respective instruments, it's a situation that could result in charred guitars, wounded friendships and questionable morning after stories. Thankfully, Toronto's Born Ruffians did so with the intent ... More >>

Defend Your Ballot: Rob Sheffield, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

Defend Your Ballot: Rembert Browne, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

Defend Your Ballot: Michael Tedder, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

Defend Your Ballot: Dan Weiss, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

Defend Your Ballot: Rob Harvilla, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

Pazz & Jop: Top 42 Singles

Pazz & Jop: Top 40 Albums

Pazz & Jop 2012 Tabulation Notes

Weak consensus versus inspiring diversity

Pazz & Jop: The Comments

Le Midi Bistro: Adieu, Karaoke!

Now it's Bergman and Bordeaux in the East Village

The Hold Steady Stay in the Key of E Street

The bar band looks to rebound after first stumble

In Depth With Japandroids' Brian King: "Nothing Is Off the Record"

Few guitar bands cleaned up this year like Japandroids, whose triumphant second album Celebration Rock brought them massive universal acclaim and a bounty of new fans in the spirit of Titus Andronicus' The Monitor and the Hold Steady's Separation Sunday. Just yesterday their Celebration Rock was nam ... More >>

Live: Why Do Japandroids Keep Romanticizing Youth In Venues That Don't Allow Young People?

Japandroids Music Hall of Williamsburg Thursday, June 28 Better than: Getting rejected at the door. Entering a borough known for its hostility—"Brooklyn has a bad rep in the rest of the continent," frontman Brian King explained, then crossed his arms over his guitar as he continued, "You're k ... More >>

YOUNGER EVERYONE

Japandroids has something to celebrate

Japandroids

Week In Review: Please Shut Down The Internet, Too, While You're At It

Santos Party House, going as a temporarily shuttered club for Halloween​It's Halloween Weekend, and we're proud to offer both costume ideas ("Dude from Baths" is great if you can hunt down the Pomeranian) and nightlife suggestions, from James Murphy at Le Bain tonight to Oneida's five-year-old ... More >>

Q&A: Japandroids' Brian King on Their Single Series, Disappointing PJ Harvey, and That Siren Festival Rumor

A pair of late bloomers, guitarist/vocalist Brian King and drummer/vocalist David Prowse had never been in a band before they graduated from the University of Victoria and started chaffing against responsible adulthood and career jobs. Which meant that when the Canadian duo formed Japandroids--pr ... More >>

'CMJ: PS I Love You+Soft Reeds+Dear Comrade'

Arms

Tonight! Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Holiday Shores, Japandroids, Best Coast, Golden Girls, Soft Pack, Calvin Harris, And The Walkmen

After a bold display of self-sexing irony (he recently covered a Hot Chip song and renamed it "I Feel Bonnie"), woodsy folksman Bonnie "Prince" Billy is hitting Monster Island for two shows in one night. Catch the late show at 10:15 to make room for the prickly, reverb-soaked dance ditties of Holi ... More >>

The Badgeless Scenes of SXSW: Fader Fort, Blue Sky Studio, French Legation Museum and More

Major Lazer with Skerrit Bwoy at Jelly's Carniville Our resident ninja photog Rebecca Smeyne spent her time at South By Southwest exploring the festival's badgeless margins--the shows anybody with a little creativity and a lot of patience could attend. From the party for Death Taxes Magazine wher ... More >>

About This Fantastic New Japandroids Single, "Art Czars"

​This one here: Japandroids, "Art Czars." It'd be tempting to chalk this up to the inevitable post Post-Nothing leap from sounding like Drive Like Jehu to sounding like Hot Snakes, but "Art Czars" was apparently recorded during the actual Post-Nothing sessions, as were the four other singles t ... More >>

Week in Review: Fist Fight in the Parking Lot

In the week a chipped tooth kept Lil Wayne out of jail and a secretive, proprietary Billboard chart made a success out of his new, abysmal Rebirth, we pulled our Paul Wall grills out of the closet, just in case. You never know when your hood pass might get pulled, you know? Care for a Sightings p ... More >>

Ted Leo Is On Team Conan

​After the letter from the man himself, and his increasingly unhinged but awesomely vindictive late night monologues, let us recommend this Conan O'Brien co-sign from Ted Leo, who has reason to be grateful to the guy--O'Brien's old show hosted Leo's Pharmacists not once but twice, to date the ... More >>

Week in Review: Let Us Soak in Positive Forces

New Year's Eve...no idea, basically. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week we learned that Animal Collective's manager is apparently endowed with a baby leg, in the one dark place where that would be a meaningful statement, we did our best to otherwise cleanse the ol' SOTC soul, apologizing to ... More >>

CMJ: Japandroids and Real Estate Pay Homage to Death and Taxes at Glasslands

​Let's start with last night's most curious revelation. "Our album's here, you can buy it," says Real Estate main guy Martin Courtney, from the stage at Glasslands, a few hours into Death and Taxes' release party there. He adds: "It'd be nice if people stopped stealing it." Polite, but pointed ... More >>

CMJ: Clare and the Reasons Provide the Twee Quotient at Mercury Lounge

Not last night, but you get the idea.​Clare and the Reasons are terrifyingly cute. They could destroy all worlds of lesser cuteness, blasting apart their molecules like Oppenheimer, and the band displayed this menace instantly via their stage props: brittle bundles of winter foliage, washboard ... More >>

THIS RADIO WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

CMJ marathon separates the men from the boys

Week in Review: I Dunno, I Don't Smoke

YYYs, by Rebecca Smeyne, of course.​In the week in which death shrugged off the "summer of" appellation and kept right on killing people, we mourned the Death Set's Beau Velasco, a good man cut down too early, and Mr. Magic, whose work as a DJ in New York in the 1980s is an enormous wormhole d ... More >>

Pig Destroyer, Eyehategod Now Playing a Suddenly Much More Metal CMJ 2009

​CMJ 2009 has just announced another wave of performers: The xx, Pig Destroyer, Eyehategod, Patrick Watson, Z-Trip, Midnight Juggernauts, Saul Williams, Janelle Monae, Superdrag, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Bear Hands, and UUVVWWZ will join Japandroids, the Very Best, Das Racist, Pissed J ... More >>

Fall Guide: The Pains of Pure at Heart Will Pervert Your Indie Cliché

Week in Review: There's Only One Viable Avant-Garde Art Form Nowadays, And It's Called Indie Rock

Sam Horine​In the week a Brooklyn indie-rock band either did or didn't kick a puppy in Prospect Park (sweat-soaked August news cycle, we see you), we amused ourselves making Rick Ross "Yo Mamma" jokes and watching rap panic take New York as 50 Cent did, and then didn't, shoot your grandmother. ... More >>

Japandroids, the Very Best, Das Racist, Pitbull (?!) Playing CMJ 2009

​CMJ, that freezing fall rite of laminated passes and crumbled, much-folded L Magazine itineraries, is evidently already upon us. The music marathon, which will run from October 20th to the 24th, has just made its initial announcement as far as who is playing this year. Japandroids, the Very B ... More >>

If You Missed a Band at Siren, Have No Fear, They Just Might Be Coming Back

Nate "Igor" SmithJapandroids Now that Siren Festival is over, the sundry bands who played the Voice's Coney Island hotdogging extravaganza can announce their next New York shows without worrying about your proscratinated attendance. So if you did, perchance, miss an act you meant to see--either beca ... More >>

My Four Favorite Things I Saw at Siren (And One Thing I, Uh, Missed)

Monotonix's frontman got some crowd-surf-drumming in, too. So Siren '09 is in the books. Thanks for dropping by if you did, which we hope you did, as the weather was excellent (much less brutally hot than in previous years, which also cut down on ill-advised Coney Island boardwalk half-nudity) and ... More >>

This Weekend! Ten Reasons Why You're Going to Siren Festival

You're going to the Siren Music Festival, and here's 10 reasons why: 1. Admission is free. 2. It's your last chance to catch Frightened Rabbit in New York this summer. Frontman Scott Hutchison, noted for slopping "filthy, twisted stuff on top of really quite polished bass," sings about dismembered ... More >>

News Roundup: Japandroids, It Came From Brooklyn, and More $5 Tickets

Leigh RightonJapandroids, the second Siren band who set their drums on fire --We've already lamented missing what was probably one of Japandroids' last tiny gigs in New York ever, but here's a manageably-sized solution: tickets for their Mercury Lounge show on September 24 are onsale today. If int ... More >>

Japandroids+Little Girls+Dinowalrus

Week in Review: I've Never Seen So Many Sick Weirdos Gathered in One Place

Rebecca Smeyne In the week one of us had to publicly defend himself against the crime of using the phrase "Fey Highwayman," we watched with amusement as close SOTC affiliate Christopher R. Weingarten became a viral video poster boy for the death of music criticism. Poetic choice of t-shirts, Chris! ... More >>

A Place To Bury Strangers, Thee Oh Sees, Tiny Masters of Today Added to This Year's Siren Festival

From last year's Siren Fest Hey! Siren Festival! Coney Island! Free concert! Thrown by this paper! All-ages! Nine hours long! Hot dogs! (Not free!) Bands! (Which are!) Beach! Sand! Skeeball! (Rain or) Shine! Naked people! Oysters! Rollercoaster! Motion sickness! Enthusiasm! Exclamation points! New ... More >>