Japandroids, Basketball @ Biltmore Caberet, Dec 4th

Every Basketball show I've attended been seances, the band dredging up primordial spirits with a power beyond reason, beyond words. In a city that where we keep our distance, their shows dissolve these barriers, the band and audience merging into a single, throbbing organism, all slaves to the pulse.

This was the first show I've seen them open; people nodded attentively to the beat and there an older lady who hopped up on stage to get her rave on, but the overall experience was more subdued than the celebratory release I've come to expect. This was the first time I've noticed that they've sterilized their sound since their from Spain. What initially drew me to Basketball was they felt like an evil version of Animal Collective, with an organic warmth to their largely electronic sound and their ability to appropriate middle eastern influences in a way that felt natural and sincere. But instead of AC's 3 part harmonies and tribal chants, Basketball painted in the colors with a hybrid of HEALTH's sputtering robo-thrash and Gang Gang Dance's weirdo-world music. Now, their sound is more straight up club; they're playing most of the same songs as when they left but I think they used to pump their backing tracks through amps, rather than straight through the PA,and mixed in more live instrumentation. I hope that shift back to that set up in the future, because the set I saw felt like the pod-people version of Basketball, all the pieces I've always loved were there, but something was off.


The crowd lost their shit when Japandroids took the stage; this is the first band to really break out of the East Van scene since pretty much forever, but the sound dampened what was otherwise an all out celebration. The guitar initially started off too clean and dull, each hit ending with a muted click on the strings and while the tone and volume improved as the set went on, it felt leaden in comparison to the earth-flattening distortion that's been a staple on all their releases. The band put on a spirited performance, but like the sound, it felt ragged and worn-out. They were rocking out hard, but I could feel the tiredness in their bones from the endless promotion and touring over the last year in support of their new record. But the audience...from crowd surfing to a rousing sing-a-long to Young Hearts Spark Fire, I was feeling the love. Both during and after the show, I heard lots of "oh my god!", "YESSS!!" and "this is amazing!", as if Japandroids was causing spontaneous orgasms throughout the crowd through the sheer force of their rocknroll power. So, maybe the night was really everything I'd hoped it to be, but it was just too late and I was too tired for me to appreciate it. Just maybe. Oh, they also didn't play Wet Hair, I love that song. Bummer.