Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Oct 17, 2024‘Fate & Alcohol’ is also the closest they have ever come to perfecting their own sound.
-
Dec 6, 2024Fate & Alcohol is the kind of album that gets into your bloodstream and lingers, ever so slightly shifting the way you see the world and your place in it. If it really is the end for Japandroids, it's a farewell that feels like it could go on forever.
-
Record CollectorNov 4, 2024A perfect, if bittersweet, swansong. [Dec 2024, p.107]
-
Oct 18, 2024Ten tracks which are probably the distillation of what Japandroids are all about. It’s a noisy yet tuneful swansong, full of fierce guitar chords, pummelling drums and songs about seedy downtown bars and hard-partying women.
-
Oct 17, 2024Japandroids have arrived at some newfound maturity on these last 10 songs, but in some ways they’ve become more reflective.
-
UncutOct 16, 2024The likes of “D&T”, “Alice” and the cheekily titled “A Gaslight Anthem” are destined to inspire sessions of air-punching by anyone who still believes a life might be saved by three chords, the truth and a glass of the good stuff. [Nov 2024, p.37]
-
Oct 16, 2024During the rousing, blissfully noisy one-two of ‘Chicago’ and ‘Upon Sober Reflection’, ‘Fate & Alcohol’ has the juice to make you forget the lights are about to go out, harnessing the energy that once made Japandroids’ reckless, romantic barroom epics so at odds with the real world.
-
Oct 18, 2024Fate & Alcohol may not overflow with the pure, undiluted elation of their previous albums, but it’s a fond farewell nonetheless, and one that beautifully caps the riotous run of a truly and rightly beloved band.
-
Nov 13, 2024All in all, Fate and Alcohol makes for a solid final act for a band which beat the actuarial tables by a wide margin.
-
Oct 17, 2024They offer up Fate & Alcohol, ten songs in thirty-six minutes that mostly succeed by wrestling with maturity and life’s big decisions but never reach the heights of their youth.
-
Oct 16, 2024By wrestling with the implications of their carefree early years on this final release, Japandroids have ensured they’ll be remembered not just as party starters, but as thoughtful songwriters, too.
-
Oct 16, 2024The songs don't hit quite as hard or as immediately as that high watermark [Celebration Rock]. But there's also nothing to suggest that Japandroids couldn't have carried on, dropping albums when they had material, touring when it suited their schedules.
-
Oct 18, 2024Passionate and bittersweet, Fate & Alcohol is the rare breakup album that suggests this finale is for the best.
-
Oct 16, 2024Familiarity – and earnestness – is, however, what Japandroids do expertly at their most locked in. It’s also been the heaviest load for their music to bear, the easiest way to knock them down.
-
Oct 23, 2024On Fate & Alcohol, Japandroids deliver the conviction that made their early records so great, but cannot overcome the palpable mismatch between their current lives and the characters their newest songs portray.