Fate & Alcohol is the reunion that Japandroids fans have been hoping for – and the farewell they’ve long feared. The Canadian duo’s fourth and final album arrives six years after guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse played their last show. With Springsteen-influenced storytelling fuelled by some of the punk intensity from their breakthrough record, 2012’s Celebration Rock, Fate & Alcohol is a classic romance – breathless, hedonistic and wistful – until it’s not.
King falls in love at a single glance on rock romcom Eye Contact High, made cinematic by Prowse’s rattling, urgent drumming and soaring gang vocals. Alice, a bluesy epic played for the first and last time at that final gig, shimmers with anticipation until: “When she said kiss me, you bet I did!” But the romance sours on Chicago, told in part from the perspective of a bartender who stares at two grossly hungover friends (and possibly lovers) in the cold light of day, and King’s curt shrug of a chorus – “Sorry baby, we call it like we see it in Chicago” – makes the rest of the album feel cloying in comparison.
