In Noah Baumbach’s 1995 directorial debut, Kicking and Screaming – a brilliant account of four friends unable to cope with the realities of post-college life – one of the characters, Max, makes a simple but somewhat profound statement about the sudden anxiety of moving on and letting go:
Max: I’m too nostalgic. I’ll admit it.
Skippy: We graduated four months ago. What can you possibly be nostalgic for?
Max: I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I’ve begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I’m reminiscing this right now. I can’t go to the bar because I’ve already looked back on it in my memory … and I didn’t have a good time.
That dialogue amused me when I saw the movie – my favorite – the first few times. And then I graduated college, watched the film another 15 times and it wasn’t so funny anymore. Nostalgia can really fuck with you, and now all I can think of is Max when I listen to the new 7-inch single, Younger Us, by Vancouver garage-rock duo Japandroids.
Like they did on their full-length debut Post-Nothing (especially the song Young Hearts Spark Fire), Brian King and David Prowse truly capture the essence of fleeting youth, before said youth is even over. As Pitchfork smartly put it: “There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that hits you when you know you’re too young to feel nostalgic about anything.” And so King, in my brain, has become the musical equivalent of Max – letting the indiscretions of youth, even if they only recently happened, already become wistful memories: “Remember saying things like we’ll sleep when we’re dead / And thinking this feeling was never gonna end.”
The Younger Us 7-inch is the second in a series that features unreleased material as the A-side and a cover for the B-side. This release, out July 20 on Polyvinyl, features Younger Us and a cover of X’s Sex And Dying In High Society. Art Czars was the first pieces in the series.
Meanwhile, a video clip of Japandroids playing at Rhythm Room in April finally surfaces. Here they are playing Heart Sweats.
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Japandroids on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic
Japandroids: Art Czars (new 7-inch)
That was a pretty cool show. I wish I could have stayed through out the whole show.