Forgive the predictability, but with a name like Tokyo Police Club, curiosity dictates me to ask the obvious: Have any of the four piece Toronto-based band ever broken the law?
“Never.” Graham Wright asserts somewhere abstractly on the road in their tour bus. Mumbled asides and muffled chuckles peppered in the background remind us that the band is never too far away: en-route to the next gig on their US tour.
"I don’t think there’s any particular message or anything. We’re just telling stories in songs. That’s really it.”
The destination is Winnipeg, Minnesota, as Tokyo Police Club’s vocalist/keyboardist confesses to his…well…speeding fines. “We had a couple of speeding tickets, that’s about the closest brushing with the law that we’ve ever had. I don’t think we have any weird obsession with that. We just happened to wind up with a band name like that.”
Crime doesn’t pay, but it certainly seems to give these boys an edge. And now they would like to teach the masses their own tales of robots, machinery and chaos. The onslaught of 2009 is transformed into a fictional yarn, as the music delves into the deepest darkest pits of modernity and futuristic sounds. With track names such as ‘Nature Of The Experiment’ and ‘Cut Cut Paste’, the technology-fuelled musical landscape is enforced with tongue-in-cheek lyrics that often suggest a slightly underlined sinister prediction for their citizens of tomorrow.
When confronted with this observation, Graham shrugs it off with neutrality. For the band, the songs are nothing more than stories. Each member of the band, nothing more than storytellers. “None of our songs express our world view. We’re not guys who feel that the world is going to be taken over by robots or anything. We’re just nerds, and they’re just short stories. I don’t think there’s any particular message or anything. We’re just telling stories in songs. That’s really it.”
Tokyo Police Club’s anthology of stories ‘A Lesson In Crime’ will be released in the UK on 12th February 2007 to an audience waiting patiently for the new Arcade Fire. Geography dictates that Graham, David, Josh and Greg may be tarred with this very same guitar-string. So, do such comparisons jar with the band at all? “I’ve read and heard a vast number of comparisons with different bands,” Graham admits, “ranging from bands we are very much influenced by, to bands I have never heard of in my entire life. I personally don’t think we sound a whole lot like any other band. But maybe we sound like these bands I’ve never heard of…”
If they do, Tokyo Police Club don’t seem too ruffled by it. And, although their raw determined drums, spiky guitars and frantic vocals owe a passing mention to the musical reptilia of The Strokes, the comparative allusions end there. Throughout the EP, handclaps give way to electronically fuelled landscapes where “impeccable disorder” is celebrated through unhinged melodies and unstable post-punk vocals. David and Graham scream, yelp and shout their uncertain apocalyptic visions of the future against certain drums and decided guitars.
It’s a promising introduction to the abstract world of Tokyo Police Club. So put away traditional thinking and make yourself a member: Japanese law enforcing is but a search warrant away…
Bookmark with:
- Login or register to post comments
- Email this page
Readers Comments:
Be the first to comment on this article.