{"id":5532,"date":"2017-02-20T22:46:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T03:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/?p=5532"},"modified":"2017-03-14T14:19:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T18:19:48","slug":"japandroids-near-to-the-wild-heart-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/japandroids-near-to-the-wild-heart-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Japandroids <br>Near to the Wild Heart of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Japandroids-Near_To_The_Wild_Heart_Of_Life.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-5533\" src=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Japandroids-Near_To_The_Wild_Heart_Of_Life.jpg\" alt=\"Japandroids, Near to the Wild Heart of Life\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Japandroids-Near_To_The_Wild_Heart_Of_Life.jpg 250w, https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Japandroids-Near_To_The_Wild_Heart_Of_Life-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a>I really like the Japandroids, and so I hope they have a long, prolific career, with a lot more highs than lows. Unfortunately, this uninspired release, <i>Near to the Wild Heart of Life<\/i> (Anti- Records), will definitely be regarded as one of those lows. It\u2019s incredibly frustrating to hear a promising new band veer so quickly from exciting, stripped-down mayhem to this boring shlock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTrue Love and a Free Life of Free Will\u201d and \u201cArc of Bar\u201d are exactly the kind of songs an indie rock band writes when they\u2019re running out of ideas\u2014kitschy military drum figures, the plodding chord changes, the verses almost devoid of melody\u2014and of course they\u2019re each too long by a minute. I had high hopes when \u201cI\u2019m Sorry (For Not Finding You Sooner)\u201d started; at least it\u2019s sonically very different. But it ends up being a one-note mixing board experiment, and an actual song never materializes.<\/p>\n<p>Japandroids have always flirted with a very earnest, Springsteen-esque delivery, and they have a tenderness that usually manages to be endearing while just occasionally stepping over the line into cloying. On <i>Wild Heart<\/i>, though, that line is obliterated. Songs like \u201cNorth East South West\u201d and \u201cIn a Body Like a Grave\u201d show just how easy it is for the spirit of Springsteen to turn into the treacly, pop-savvy scourge of John Cougar Mellencamp. Hell, if you strip \u201cMidnight to Morning\u201d of its fuzz you\u2019d find out that underneath it\u2019s just a bad Trixter song.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe we\u2019ll look back on this as a galvanizing moment for a great band, the era when they weren\u2019t true to themselves and they told their fans \u201cnever again.\u201d I would find that story easier to believe if this were some wild experiment gone wrong. But more likely this record is revealing their truest colors and before they were getting by on pure chaos and adrenaline. Maybe what we\u2019ve discovered is just how close their better songs are to the edge of badness. If that\u2019s the case, I look forward to ignoring them from now on. I just really don\u2019t want to believe that this was the best they could do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I really like the Japandroids, and so I hope they have a long, prolific career, with a lot more highs than lows. Unfortunately, this uninspired release, <i>Near<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[34,1107,1917],"class_list":["post-5532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","tag-album-review","tag-anti-records","tag-japandroids"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Japandroids Near to the Wild Heart of Life - The Agit Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/japandroids-near-to-the-wild-heart-of-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Japandroids Near to the Wild Heart of Life - The Agit Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I really like the Japandroids, and so I hope they have a long, prolific career, with a lot more highs than lows. 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