Near to the Wild Heart of Life
| Near to the Wild Heart of Life | ||||
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| Studio album by Japandroids | ||||
| Released | January 27, 2017 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 36:49 | |||
| Label |
Anti- (Worldwide) Arts & Crafts (Canada) |
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| Producer | Japandroids | |||
| Japandroids chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Near to the Wild Heart of Life | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 79/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| The A.V. Club | A- |
| The Guardian | |
| Pitchfork | 7.1/10 |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Tiny Mix Tapes |    |
Near to the Wild Heart of Life is the third studio album by the Canadian rock duo Japandroids, released on January 27, 2017 on Anti-. Described by vocalist and guitarist Brian King as the band's first attempt at making a "proper studio album," the release features a more polished aesthetic than their previous releases.
With the band members living in separate cities for the first time, the album was written over the period of a year between 2014 and 2015. The recording process found the band experimenting with additional instruments and studio overdubs for the first time. The album was preceded by the singles, "Near to the Wild Heart of Life" and "No Known Drink or Drug".
After touring extensively in support of the duo's second studio album, Celebration Rock (2012), Brian King and David Prowse took a break from Japandroids for six months: "When we got home, we were just totally destroyed, really burnt out both physically and mentally to the point that despite how much we love playing in the band, we just needed a break; at that point, we hadn’t taken a serious break from the band in five years. So we took about six months off - the first half of 2014 - and decided to dedicate that time to ourselves and our personal lives." Reconvening after their self-imposed break, King and Prowse spent a year writing Near to the Wild Heart of Life between 2014 and 2015; starting the process in New Orleans: "We rented a house and spent about five weeks in this house with all the gear in the living room and just played every day. We hadn’t written in a long time, and it took a minute to just get the ball rolling again."
The duo entered to studio in late 2015 to begin recording the album. The band attribute waiting to work with record producer Peter Katis as one of the primary reasons for the album's delayed release: "We really wanted Peter Katis, who’s well known for working with bands like The National and Interpol, to mix our record so we had a little waiting around to be able to work with him."
The album features a more polished aesthetic in comparison to its predecessors Post-Nothing (2009) and Celebration Rock (2012). Regarding this change in sound, Brian King noted, "When we started the band ten years ago, we were really into a lot of raw and live sounding records by garage rock bands where the record sounded like you were going to a show. That’s the kind of band we wanted to start and that's the kind of records we wanted to make. I think when we finished Celebration Rock, we felt like we’d achieved that." The band implemented the use of studio overdubs more so than in the past, and introduced new instruments including bass guitar, acoustic guitar and synthesizers: "We didn't worry about it sounding live or only performing the songs in a way exactly like we would on stage; we worried about the whole live performance elements afterward. And that’s uncharted territory for us." Drummer David Prowse attributes the band's change in direction to the amount of time it took to record the album: "We wanted to make a more sonically diverse record as well. Exploring different sounds and not having it just be, like, okay Brian sets up his pedals in exactly this way, plugs in and the guitar sound is static and all those things that we’ve done in the past. We were very interested in doing something different, but at the same time we didn’t have a clear idea of how we were going to do that. And that’s part of what took time."
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