"We used to dream. Now we worry about dying"

I must say there are a shit ton (that's a technical term) of trendy bands jumping on the lo-fi revival bandwagon. Fuzzy, scuzzy rock seems to be all the rage lately. Which is cool and all if that's your thing. As for me, well I like my noise in small doses. Just a smidge of distortion and reverb on, oh say, one song per album and I usually have my fill. This basically means I'm ill-equipped to review gazillions of albums (that's another technical term). However there is one little song on one noisy-as-hell album that totally took me by surprise.
Canadian duo Japandroids released a balls-illy titled album called Post-Nothing, which sorta implies that they are beyond aesthetic labels and genres etc. It's a great big middle finger of a title and sonically they live up to that mischeviousness with their great big squalls of sound. Anyway, as I was listening to this album, primarily out of the desire to expand my ears beyond the realm of indie-acoustic-pop prettiness but mostly because I'm a sucker for the bro-mantic cover photo, I was caught off guard. Because "Young Hearts Spark Fire" is a wallop of awesome. It's a bit like a kick to the gut, but one that stutters and trips before it hits you. Not to mention the repition of this ominious line: "We used to dream. Now we worry about dying". Powerful stuff.

Post-Nothing is being re-released on Polyvinyl August 4.

Young Hearts Spark Fire - Japandroids