Near to the Wild Heart of Life isn’t like that.

It turns out Celebration Rock, one of my go-to records over the past half a decade, is a product of its time. Maybe it’s the Obama era, or simply a product of the band’s youth, but its fun-loving nature isn’t replicated on Near to the Wild Heart of Life.

Wild Heart sounds like the post-hangover record to Celebration Rock’s blissful joy. That’s not to say it’s a sad record — far from it, really. But it feels like Japandroids looked at Celebration Rock and decided they needed to grow up a little bit.

In some respects, the band sounds a little less energetic than before. “Mature” is an appropriate word, but it carries unfortunately negative connotations. The changes on Wild Heart are almost all for the better.

In many ways, songs like “North East South West” are among the best the band has made. It’s dynamic without losing its forward motion and energy. “True Love and a Free Life of Free Will” is a slow song, and it consequently speaks a totally different musical language than anything Japandroids made in the past. It’s a surprising direction for Japandroids to pursue after this many years of gun-blazing rock, but it’s a direction they’re surprisingly comfortable in.

You could call Celebration Rock a youthful record and Wild Heart an adult one, or at least a record influenced by adulthood. But that would be missing the big picture.

And the big picture is this: Japandroids use Near to the Wild Heart of Life as a transitionary record. They reflect on whether they’ve been, and carefully consider where they’d like to go. “In a Body Like a Grave” sees the band reflect on the hometowns they’re from, what they sacrificed to get where they are now, and what it feels like to look back even as they look forward. It ends the record on a high note, but leaves us wanting more.

There are energetic moments on Wild Heart reminiscent of the band’s past, but now Japandroids looks to those moments as sentimental throwbacks. But thankfully, in the process of diversifying their sound, Japandroids’ music has become more nuanced and subtle. They’re a better band, even if they’re a different one now.

Near to the Wild Heart of Life is less of a party. More of a thought. And as Japandroids shift from a celebration in 2012 to introspection in 2017, so too does the world.

Main photo by Leigh Righton.

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Schmilco reminds me of those songs.

This is obvious from the opening notes. “Normal American Kids” is a folk opener that feels inauspicious after the rocky tracks of Star Wars. Featuring just Jeff Tweedy’s voice and acoustic guitar, “Normal American Kids” defies logic by excluding bass lines and drum work from the song at all.

When the other band members finally get a chance to contribute on “If I Ever Was a Child”, they take a back seat to the acoustic guitar and Tweedy’s voice. Schmilco is a folk record. It’s different. If Sufjan Stevens took over the band, this is the record I would expect them to make.

Not every song is completely downbeat. “Nope” has a playful backbeat. “Someone to Lose” feels like it’s from The Whole Love era — a rollicking bass line carries the song forward, not unlike the best songs from that record.

But the record is at its best when Tweedy and co. are being willfully laid-back and folk-inspired. “Quarters” and “Happiness” (which is obviously ironically titled) are two standouts towards the end of the record.

There are poor songs here — nobody would say Schmilco is the band’s best record — but they’re few and far between. If anything, Schmilco has a good batting average. But it lacks the energy of a traditional record, and that’s going to throw people off at first listen.

As a result, the most legitimate complaint people could have with Schmilco is that the band sounds bored. I don’t think they do — but I think they know that’s the reaction they’re going to get. The title alone is a dead giveaway that they’re certain nobody will care about the record. It’s as if they threw their hands in the air and said “whatever.”

Whether or not you’ll like Schmilco depends on whether or not you already like Wilco. For newcomers, it’s not going to be the best place to start. But if you’re a fan of the band, you’re going to find a lot to like here — despite the album title’s suggestion otherwise.

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It’s an intriguing concept that mixes well with Shauf’s morore-sounding, baroque pop, indie folk stylings. It’s not far off from Father John Misty’s approach: a concept album about a loosely connected theme, but approached with an interest in its most mundane elements.

There’s a diversity of guests here that feels exactly appropriate for what Shauf is going for. On “Early to the Party,” a man arrives way earlier than necessary. At the end of “Twist Your Ankle,” he sings “Everybody’s laughing at me; I wish I just stayed home.” And the song brilliantly ends, quite literally, on that note.

“Alexander All Alone” is about a smoker who, on his last pack, suddenly keels over and dies. “Begin Again” is about being stuck with a friend who can’t stop bragging about how he’s cheating on his partner with the girl Shauf wants to be with — and Shauf pleads for the world to end rather than the conversation to continue.

Musically, it does end: the music reaches a climactic swell, as if the light has arrived to “dissolve [them] all,” as Shauf so desperately wants. It’s brilliantly well-realized, the musical stuff of indie pop dreams.

I share these songs specifically with you not because they’re exceptional examples from the album. Every song on The Party is worth hearing; it’s an exceptional record — one of the year’s best in its genre. But the songs I’ve described are great examples of the sheer amount of variety on display. Every song has as much of a personality as its characters do. For a songwriter self-releasing his first record on a “serious” label, that’s an accomplishment.

With The Party, Andy Shauf has matured and become one of Canada’s best singer-songwriters. It’s a treat of an album. I think you’re going to love it.

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That could be the result of the project’s origins. van der Spek’s from South Africa, based in sunny Los Angeles, and reportedly started working under the pseudonym Prism Tats in grunge-y Seattle. In Seattle, as a break from his work as a singer-songwriter, he began to do one-man shows with nothing but his guitar and a drum machine.

The record doesn’t stray far from the same roots. The drum machine obviously doesn’t sound like a full kit, and it lends the record its pop qualities. But Garrett’s work with his guitar lands squarely on the rock spectrum, somewhere between post-punk musing and garage rock riffage. Songs like Death or Fame are particularly well-suited for this blend, which a backing track that keeps the song moving at a steady pace and backing vocal work that feels like Los Angeles.

The opening two tracks, Pacifist Masochist and Creep Out // Freak Out are both magically within both camps as well. Catchy, rock-infused tracks that play delightfully well within the scope of California’s pop air. And it’s funny, because (like almost everybody from Los Angeles) Prism Tats spends most of his time making fun of the L.A. culture. I honestly can’t tell if he’s being sincere or not when he sings “I don’t want to make art, I want to make money.”

Thankfully, his lyrical prowess is not the point of the record. What makes Prism Tats unique is the part of it that is a one-man show: it’s a very singular musical vision from a clearly skilled musician. It’s a novel approach to making music, but one that doesn’t allow for collaboration. Yet if you didn’t know that he was a one-man show, you would assume that he was working with a full band on the music, because it doesn’t suffer despite itself.

And that’s really the miracle of the record. It’s a multi-layered album that doesn’t overstay its welcome, dabbles in a myriad of styles (check out Haunt Me’s sound towards the end of the record), but it’s all from the mind of one man. It should be awful. It should be un-listenable. Frankly, it’s the sort of record that musicians make fun: the solo record where the vocalist carries such an inflated sense of self-importance that he replaces his peers with machines. But with Prism Tats, the experiment actually works! His self-titled debut is a wonderful listen that’s playful, fun, and worth examining.

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Every track on this album is great, and I’d love to talk about each one individually, but in the interest of brevity, I want to let you know Man is the single. It’s clever, but not my favourite track on the record. When it comes to favourites, I dare you to listen to Nearly Midnight, Honolulu without your jaw dropping, with these lyrics delivered a cappella:

Hey, little kid that I saw at the bus stop one day. It was nearly midnight in Honolulu. We were waiting for the shuttle to take us to the aeroplane, when your mother said, like I couldn’t hear her, she said: “Get the fuck away from me! Why don’t you ever shut up? Get the fuck away from me!” … They won’t believe you when you say, “My mother, she did not love me.”

I could go on a little longer about this record, but there’s no point. It’s just amazing from start to finish. If you want more, check out City Swan and Where Did I Leave That Fire, but do yourself a favour and listen to the album all the way through. Simply remarkable.

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