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.
Similarly, One Without the Other reveals the rush and glamour of touring to be inextricable from King’s “two bottles of anything” approach to the road: he recently told Stereogum that he is now a year sober and expecting his first child. Passionate and bittersweet, Fate & Alcohol is the rare breakup album that suggests this finale is for the best.
