Japandroids at Bowery Ballroom - NYTimes.com Brian King, the frontman and head cheerleader of Japandroids, had a lot to say on Wednesday night. He talked about how the band needed to play one song as a warm-up for this show, at the Bowery Ballroom; about how when he and the drummer David Prowse recently played "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," they had to cut "The House That Heaven Built" down to four minutes; about how on this night they needed the crowd's vocal help on "The Nights of Wine and Roses" because "a professional band could do it, we cannot," adding: "Are you the third member of the band when you see Coldplay? I think not. Japandroids Brian King, left, and David Prowse of this Canadian rock duo, promoting their new album, "Celebration Rock," at the Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday evening. Inclusion is part of Japandroids" shtick. The performances of this two-piece outfit from Vancouver are like little punkish quakes, powerful and destabilizing. Of recent two-member bands - from the White Stripes to the Black Keys to No Age and more - Japandroids have by far the most exuberant, affirming live show. That's in keeping with the mood of "Celebration Rock" (Polyvinyl), their second album, which was released last month. It's cleaner, bigger and more stomping than this band's outstanding debut album, "Post-Nothing," while still preserving some of its deliberate naïveté. There's an appealing fragility to Japandroids on record. Mr. King is still a nervous singer, and it often sounds as if he were rushing out the lines before running out of air, his voice thinning as he goes. When Mr. Prowse is backing him up with choruses of whoas and ooohs, they sound loose and cathartic, two guys bashing away and hoping people will get in on the fun. There are bits of the Clash as well as of the Replacements in the energy and directness of this band, but also a touch of Springsteen, at least in the way his raw, scraped-up presentation has been refracted by younger, slicker bands like the Gaslight Anthem. Still, whatever echoes of Springsteen there might be are faint. Japandroids don't have his burden of moral gravity, thankfully, nor his tendency to use small details to signal universal truths. For Mr. King and Mr. Prowse characters are just that, people to whom stories happen, who make decisions based on their own good or bad instincts. They're small and fascinating to tag along with. Mr. King may have been winking at the comparison during this show, with his tucked-in white T-shirt, its sleeves rolled into short cuffs. A fan at the foot of the stage was pointed up at him, allowing his hair to ripple rhythmically, as if he were about to be photographed and had to display a rock star look at any second. It was kind of a joke, a soft-pedaled attempt at flamboyance by a singer-guitarist still acclimating to big rooms. That sometimes created a disconnect between what was happening onstage and what was happening in the crowd. Mr. King and Mr. Prowse have a breezy, joyful rapport, with good cheer that has become maybe just a touch ossified by repetition. The band's choruses are shout-alongs, and the songs were being received like anthems, their subtleties lost in the mosh pit and amid the fist pumps. This was a fundamentally gentle band being experienced very roughly. There were no people at the duo's first New York show, at Lit Lounge in 2008, Mr. King said. That's not a problem Japandroids have anymore. This show was one of two they had scheduled in New York. "It can happen to you just like it happened to us," Mr. King said of the ascent of his band - once an underdog, now a champion.