Life Imitating Noise: Japandroids

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AFTER MORE THAN two years of playing Vancouver, B.C., as hard as possible and toiling away as an independent band, Japandroids was finally ready go for broke. Guitarist Brian King quit his full-time job, moved out of his house, put his possessions in storage and was ready to embark on the band's biggest tour yet.

Three days in, tragedy intervened.

King had to be rushed to the hospital because of a perforated ulcer, leaving the band — and the ambitious tour — sidelined for weeks.

"I canceled my phone, I moved out of my house, I quit my job, so my whole life was in, basically, a van, and I managed to go less than a week before I was back home in Vancouver with no home, no job and not able to fucking move," King said. "It was a pretty surreal experience."

But rather then dwell on it, King focused on recovery.

"It probably should have been more of an eye-opener than it really was, but all I could think of was getting back on tour and going out and seeing the world again," he said. "I didn't give much thought to what actually happened. Maybe it was because it was too scary and I'd never been through something like that before, so I just kind of blocked it out, but my mind the whole time was trying to get better as quickly as possible, and get back on the tour because that was our first big tour and it only happened a few days in, and we had been counting down to that tour for months and months. To have it derail so quickly was just so devastating."

King's sentiments ring especially true when you consider the garage rock duo's brief history. King and drummer David Prowse met during college in Victoria, BC — King graduated in 2005 — and discussed playing music together, but it was always an idea for the future, not the present.

"Neither of us played in bands, I didn't have a guitar or anything the entire time I went to school," King said. "We had talked about starting a band the whole time; and we'd go to shows together; and we listened to a lot of the same music; and it was always something we talked about doing because I could play guitar and Dave was learning to play drums — it was really hypothetical."

When Prowse transferred mid-way through school, the two set a plan: King would move to Vancouver — where Prowse now went to school — as soon as King graduated and they'd start a band.

"While we started the band out of, obviously, fun, we always intended to try and actually make something with ourselves musically," King said. "I'd totally be lying if I said we started making music for fun and everything was a total accident. We really wanted from the beginning to make records and go on tour and have — not necessarily a rock star lifestyle — but to be in a band for a living and we worked really hard from the very beginning to try and make that happen."

Japandroids were D.I.Y. from the start — with King and Prowse acting as their own booking agent, management, promotional team and record label.

"Neither of us really knew anything about local music, or the local scene, or playing in a real band, or putting on shows, or putting out records — anything — so we had to learn that ourselves," King said.

After starting up in 2006, Japandroids played Vancouver as much as possible in 2007 and 2008 and put out two self-released EPs. But by the end of 2008, the lack of interest from the record industry was downright discouraging.

"A lot of people knew who we were, but in the whole time we were a band we hadn't even gotten an e-mail from anyone who was interested in helping our band, so we were pretty disheartened," King said. "Dave especially had other things he wanted to do with his life that weren't music."

So after recording Japandroids' first full-length, "Post-Nothing," King and Prowse had agreed to call it quits — the album and shows at the Pop Montreal festival and CMJ in New York were to be Japandroids' swan song.

"We were starting not to get along very well," King said. "I know Dave really wanted to go do other stuff, and I wanted to keep going. Going out east and playing these shows was ending it on a real high note. We were pretty content with the band ending; this was a great first band. And I was getting ready to start a new band; Dave was talking about going back to school. Our whole lives got turned upside down in January."

That's when someone from Unfamiliar Records, a small Canadian label said he wanted to put out "Post-Nothing."

"I had already sent the record to get pressed, so I had to literally call them and say, 'Stop the presses!' as stupid as that sounds," King said.

So "Post-Nothing," which was released in the U.S. in April, along with the tour, was supposed to be Japandroids' first shot at the touring life King and Prowse craved. On top of it, the band was getting good press and blog buzz. The pressure — and desire — probably forced King back into action a bit sooner than he should have. The canceled April and May dates were rescheduled for June, July and August.

"Maybe that was a bit premature to go out in the summer," King admits now. "I was struggling on tour to play hard every night and be healthy and not be in pain, but by this tour I'm doing really well — not quite 100 percent, but almost back to normal."

And the band can also focus on getting back to its earnest noise rock, with a twist. "Post-Nothing" is named as a bit of a joke to band biographies in press releases. King was working on a bio for the band and didn't want to fall into PR traps.

"I couldn't write something that was — quote — serious, so I ended up writing something that was tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic," he said. "I ended up writing that our music was post-nothing and that we steal a little bit of something from all these bands."

As a lyricist, King embodies the spirit of youthful uncertainty — he spent four years working in mineral discovery, a middling, boring start into the career of a young professional.

"I think the music is really genuine," King said. "I never really thought about anything while we were writing the record. I don't know, I just wrote the only thing I knew how to get in front of people and just sing and not feel totally illegitimate."

"Post-Nothing's" centerpiece is the 5-minute "Young Hearts Spark Fire," in which King sings: "We used to dream / Now we worry about dying / I don't want to worry about dying / I just want to worry about those sunshine girls." Those lines come with a bit of unfortunate irony now, after King's surgery.

"A lot of people have actually commented on that and it's pretty weird actually," he said, on being asked if the song now feels like life imitating art. "I don't know if we would call what we do art, but life imitating noise, that's for sure. "

» Rock and Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NE; with Real Estate and Neon Indian; Mon., Oct. 19., 8:30 p.m., $10 to $12; 202-388-7625.

Photo courtesy Leigh Righton