Rock band Japandroids
Canadian rockduo Japandroids are still pinching themselves over their meteoric rise
Brian King sounds confused when asked to cast his mind over 2012, a year that saw his band Japandroids become the new darlings of North America's rock scene, with a sophomore release that made album-of-the-year lists.
"People ask what's it like to have these reviews and to make these lists, but we have to say we don't know because we felt so cut off" during that time, the guitarist and vocalist says by phone from Vancouver, Canada.
It was a "whirlwind year - but we spent so much of it on tour, and on tour we live in a bubble. You have your own little universe", King says as he takes stock of 12 months that started in a state of panic as he and co-Japandroid David Prowse prepared for the release of their second album, , and ended with them being praised by the likes of
He's been home just a few days, enjoying a brief pause in a touring schedule that has kept him and drummer Prowse on the road since last May. The schedule has taken them on three tours of the US and will resume this week when the pair travel to Asia, including a gig at Grappa's Cellar on January 23.
Their success took King and Prowse by surprise. Three years ago, they were organising their own gigs around Vancouver and still holding down day jobs (aptly for the rocking King, he was a geologist). Then, in 2009, came debut album , a brash, hard-rocking slab of melodic guitar-driven grooves that won the band comparisons with many of their heroes, from fellow duo White Stripes to Bruce Springsteen.
King's twitchy stage performance, reminiscent of peak-period Kurt Cobain, and Prowse's manic tub-thumping won them glowing reviews, and "the shows just got bigger and wilder", King says in a voice left ragged by a cold he attributes to the "post-tour recovery" syndrome that "always happens when … months of tour life finally catches up with you when you get home".
