My Life In 35 Songs, Track 24: “The House That Heaven Built” by Japandroids

It’s a lifeless life, with no fixed address to give/But you’re not mine to die for anymore, so I must live.

“Last Call at 301.” That’s what my college roommates and I called the final party we threw at our apartment, one week before we graduated.

Over the course of our junior and senior years, the place my roommates and I shared had become something of a de-facto hangout spot among our friend group. That was partially because of our habit for hosting Super Smash Bros battles on weeknights, but mostly because my roommate Danny would just invite people over for impromptu dinner parties all the time, or study sessions, or movie nights, or cocktail hours. On any night of the week, there was a good chance of finding 2-6 guests in our living room. And so, while we had college bars that we loved – special shoutout to the Kalamazoo Beer Exchange, the coolest beer bar I ever frequented – it ultimately made the most sense for us to have our last big college hurrah at our place: Apartment 301.

My big responsibility for that party, other than chipping in for booze, was putting together the perfect party playlist for our big sendoff. I was absolutely up to the task. In a lot of ways, I’d been training for this moment my whole life. As this series attests, I have a habit for very carefully and deliberately soundtracking the big, climactic moments of my life, and this party was surely going to be one such moment. And while I knew most of the songs on the playlist had to be shared touchstones – tracks that would get a group full of college kids laughing, vibing, dancing, reminiscing, and singing along – I made sure to save one slot on the playlist just for me, so that I could play the Japandroids song “The House That Heaven Built” as loud as fucking possible in a room full of elated drunk people.

“The House That Heaven Built” is a song built for excess. It’s a song for drinking too much and shouting along until your voice is gone. It’s a song for driving too fast and hopefully not getting pulled over for it. It’s a song for pushing yourself to your absolute limit during a run, or whatever your preferred method of exercise might be. And it is, I have to assume, a song for losing your absolute mind at a concert. I never got to see Japandroids live before they called it quits, but when I listen to this song, I can almost feel myself being buffeted around in the mosh pit.

Celebration Rock, the second album from Canadian rockers Japandroids, is the Born to Run of the 21st century. Just like Born to Run, it has a fleet eight-song tracklist. Just like Born to Run, it has an awful lot to say about wild youth and highways and escapism and male friendship. Just like Born to Run, it sounds best when you’re young and feeling completely infinite. And just like Born to Run, it ends with so much climactic heft that it almost feels like a Broadway musical.

Really, the only way that Celebration Rock isn’t like Born to Run is that Bruce Springsteen made Born to Run as maximalist as possible, with a full, mighty band, countless overdubs, and songs that are epic in part because of their many components – their sax solos and piano interludes and horn sections. In contrast, Celebration Rock was just two dudes, a drummer and a guitarist, playing simple rock songs in a no-frills way. But Celebration Rock ends up having the spirit of Born to Run regardless, because Japandroids members Davis Prowse and Brian King play with so much volume and so much heart that the songs come out feeling similarly epic. In his 10-year retrospective piece about Celebration Rock, published by Stereogum in 2022, rock critic Ian Cohen wrote that this album imagined “what would happen if everything we expected from U2 or AC/DC — rock music that blots out every other concern besides transcendence and salvation, or makes getting drunk and rocking out the highest possible calling — was delivered by bands that sound like Japandroids.” That’s a pretty good way of putting it, Ian.

Last Call at 301 ended up being a total blast. My roommates and I did hourly shots together, of Gray Goose, which Danny often sprung for in honor of special occasions. A truly massive number of our classmates cycled in and out over the course of the night, assembling a pretty solid curtain call of the familiar faces from throughout my college years. At some point in the night, I brought out the Batman mask I’d worn at Halloween, which led to a whole lot of people at the party taking turns wearing the mask and yelling at each other in the Christian Bale voice. And the music played on and on in the background, occasionally eliciting a euphoric sing-along, but mostly just setting the mood.

In a perfect world, “The House That Heaven Built” would have led to the most euphoric sing-along of all. I would have loved to hear all my drunk friends hollering the chorus as one: “When they love you, and they will/Tell ‘em all they’ll love in my shadow/And if they try to slow you down/Tell ‘em all to go to hell.” It’s a hook built for drunken sing-alongs, and in another era, it might have been a generational anthem. It might have actually been “Born to Run.” In reality, no one else at this party had ever heard of Japandroids, let alone this song. And frankly, by the time “The House That Heaven Built” played, I’d had more than enough to drink and was probably about 20 minutes away from crashing into my bed and calling it a night. But I still kind of love that my last memory of that night is stumbling to the stereo to turn up the volume when this song started to play, and singing along, even if no one else was.

“When the soul of the city was laid to rest/And the nights forgotten, and left for dead…”

I felt pretty “left for dead” the next morning, and I wasn’t the only one. My roommates were as wiped out as I was, and half a dozen guests were sleeping it off on the couches or armchairs in our living room. By the time we finally roused ourselves, it was going on 11 or 12. We all rallied to go to breakfast at a café down the street, drowning our hangovers in strong coffee and greasy food. Then came afternoon naps and a lazy evening in front of the TV watching whatever was on. We probably were all in bed before 10pm.

That weekend, to me, marked the true end of college. I’d wrap up my last exams and class assignments in the following days, and I think we even took one last trip to our favorite bars that Thursday night. On Friday, my family arrived for commencement weekend. On Saturday, I donned my graduation gown and officially finished college. That evening, I went out for dinner with my parents and my grandparents and my brother and my girlfriend to celebrate. And on Sunday, I packed up my apartment, said goodbye to my roommates, and hit the road. Just like that, the four years of college had drawn to a close.

If you’ve been reading this series, you know that college was a weird little roller coaster for me. I spent much of my freshman year lonely, missing home and my high school friends, and trying to fit in. I spent much of my sophomore year miserable, hating my job as an RA and living for the weekends I spent with my girlfriend in the midst of our first months in a long-distance relationship. And I spent much of my junior year trying to figure out what to do after I failed out of my initial major. There wasn’t much room, amidst all of that chaos, to cherish the simple pleasures of the typical college experience. I was always preoccupied with something else.

Senior year was different. For the first time since high school, I felt genuinely comfortable in my own skin. By not fretting over the past, not working a job I hated, and not chasing down an against-all-odds dream, I suddenly had way less to stress about. As for my long-distance relationship, my girlfriend and I were old pros by that point, and we had a way easier time managing the days apart. I let myself relax and have fun. I got closer with my roommates, and we went on lots of crazy adventures together. And with a little help from them, and from the rest of my friends, I packed everything about the college experience that I’d been missing into the space of a single school year.

“The House That Heaven Built,” to me, is the song that will always remind me most of all the riotous fun and unencumbered joy of that year. “You’re not mine to die for anymore, so I must live,” goes the key line in the bridge. For me, that line encapsulated all the stuff I’d been letting hold me back – especially being a vocal performance major – and how thoroughly alive I felt by cutting it all loose at long last. I’m just glad college didn’t end before I realized everything I was missing.

A few years ago, when my friend Danny got married, I blasted Celebration Rock for four straight hours in the car as I drove to Detroit for his bachelor party. Danny and I had gotten paired as roommates in freshman year and had ended up living together three of the four years of college. He was there for most of my favorite college memories, including that last party in apartment 301. His bachelor party came eight years after we’d all parted ways, and I’d probably seen him fewer than 10 times total across those years. But when the time came to rage at the bars, and on the party bus, and at the beer pong table in the Airbnb, it felt like no time had passed at all.

It was like another lyric I love from Celebration Rock: “Gimme my boys and I swimmin’ through the streets/Give me younger us.”

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