Our Songs of the Week column looks at great new tunes from the last seven days and analyzes notable releases. Find our new favorites and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist, and for other great songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, we look at the return of some old favorites, like Japandroids, Kim Deal, and Alan Sparhawk.
New and Notable:
Japandroids Fight Back
It’s clear from the first passionate strum of a distorted electric guitar. Japandroids are back, and this is their swan song.
The Vancouver indie rock duo have waited seven long years to reemerge, and now, they’re back with “Chicago,” the first offering from their fourth and final album, Fate & Alcohol. It’s apt that Japandroids are finally embracing the end, because their full-force sound has always sounded like each song, each note, each shrieked chorus, each drum fill, each feeling could be their last.
Still, “Chicago” burns with the kind of confidence that takes years to hone. “Sorry baby, we call it like we see it in Chicago,” sings Brian King in the chorus, sneering slightly in the mic as David Prowse drums up a wash of snare hits behind him. King circles around the premise, but finally employs his own advice in the final verse when he barks “You can sit there, deny it all night, baby/ but this ‘just friends’ act ain’t fooling me.”
Like the best of the band’s 2012 opus Celebration Rock, these statements land like bricks in rushing water. Their passion is infectious, their urgency palpable. The stakes are always high in Japandroids songs, but in “Chicago,” they once again turn that fight-or-flight energy into soaring, searing rock ‘n roll. It’s good to have them back — endings are tough, but Japandroids definitely know how to leave on a high note. — Paolo Ragusa
Alan Sparhawk Mourns from a Distance
When you think of the band Low, you definitely don’t think of ominous trap beats and pitched up, distorted, auto-tuned vocals, do you? Alan Sparhawk, one half of the lauded Minnesota duo, seems to be using these foreign qualities as a sort of grand reintroduction.
The singer, songwriter, and producer reemerged this week to announce his debut solo album White Roses, My God, and it’s the first we’ve heard of Sparhawk since his wife and musical partner Mimi Parker passed away from cancer in 2022. Sparhawk is no stranger to profound sonics and moving stanzas — but even the more experimental, electronic-addled work from Low’s final bow Hey What is alien to “Can U Hear,” a roiling rager that’s energetic and devastating all at once.
It reads a lot like the stream-of-consciousness, trap-induced power that Kim Gordon employed on her new album, The Collective, but the uncertainty and anguish hidden within “Can U Hear” makes it a more heartfelt listen. It’s tragically beautiful to hear Sparhawk so humanly wounded, but presented in a way that makes him more an entity or spirit than anything else. Like they say — distance makes the heart grow fonder. — P. Ragusa
Kim Deal Wastes Away Again in Breeders-ritaville
How many good things have come into this world thanks to Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville?” Well, whatever the number was, add one more to the tally, as we have it to thank for Kim Deal’s killer, chilled-out new solo cut “Coast.”
Inspired by catching a wedding band performing “Margaritaville” with, as Deal put it, “revelatory levels of low self-esteem,” the tune taps into a sandy, ocean-scented tone thanks to a mid-tempo groove, happy-go-lucky horns, and a vocal melody that just begs you to sing along. It’s a perfect little ditty for the indie kids and the beach bums alike.
For her first solo release in a decade, The Breeders’ member has come back with a vengeance — and by vengeance, we mean an intensely enjoyable, endlessly repayable, wonderfully sweet cut that proves she hasn’t lost any of her songwriting expertise. — Jonah Krueger