Saturday, May 10, 2008

Tokyo Police Club Are You Listening?  It's Noah Sanders.
 

I’m going to be frank.  I’m a little worried about Tokyo Police Club.  I’m a dedicated TPC fan (yes, paint my fingernails and call me a school girl) and I think the catchy little Montreal trio has stumbled upon some difficult musical times.  If you’ve read a post about the band you’ve heard a blogger bitching about the lengthy hiatus between their initial A Lesson In Crime EP and their first LP, Elephant Shell.  It’s been almost two years and now, and after two brief EPs, the band has just gotten around to releasing the album, dredging up a bit of indie-vitriol in the process. You’d think that two years of faux downtime (let us not forget the two EPs) the band’s first full length release would be a face-melter, a memorable masterpiece that’d leave us eagerly waiting fans on our collective asses.  I mean, TWO YEARS is a pretty long time to work on a rock-pop album (well, unless your Portishead) and the final product better be mind-blowing. Unfortunately, TPC’s newest is a bit, well, disappointing.  As we music dorks are like to do, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, ranking and re-ranking my TPC albums in order of best to worst, trying to piece together the band’s progression, pretty much sacrificing my social life to piece together a chronological argument as to why I believe TPC is in dire straits as a musical force right now.  I’m going album by album, picking apart what I like, what I love, and what I think needs some work.  Don’t be made TPC, I’m just a fan who wants to help.

A Lesson In Crime EP

Strangely enough, this is the third TPC album I got wind of.  As I’ve said before but it has taken me a while to truly immerse myself in the current music scene and I’ve missed out or showed up late to the party numerous times because of it.  Take TPC, I picked up their Your English Is Good single a little over a year ago, thinking, as I’m wont to do, I’d stumbled across some unknown group of Canadians.  Turns out I’d just arrived late, yet again, and was in the middle of the lengthy hiatus between TPC’s A Lesson In Crime EP and their next full length.  Thus, this was the third album of TPC’s I actually put my ears to.

And that’s just another damn shame on the long list of damn shames in my life.  A Lesson In Crime is pretty much everything I want in a rock-pop album.  Driving guitars, attractive melodies, machine gun patter drums and a series of bass riffs that’ll make you move, make you dance, make you smile.  Lead-man David Monks laces each track with strangely literary, almost scientific lyrics that fit the sort of cold, clean sound TPC creates. It’s pretty much a dance party from day one, sure a few of the songs stray in to softer lands, but we’re never to far away from bouncing bass lines and crunchy guitars.

The albums centerpiece is most certainly Nature of the Experiment, a song I’ve listened to hundreds of times and is high up on my list of all-time singles.  If this was the only good song on the album, it’d still be a winner in my mind, but luckily for us TPC rolls out seven high-end money-makers for us to enjoy.  From the screaming start of Cheer It On to the soft keyboard-fade of La Ferrasie it’s a brilliant debut.

Unfortunately, maybe too brilliant.

:Tokyo Police Club - Nature Of The Experiment:

Your English Is Good EP

A brief history lesson: the release of A Lesson In Crime exploded this band.  Almost instantly they’re playing Conan, they’re on all the big summer tours, they’re banging around on KEXP – they’ve made the indie jump.  And everyone is eagerly awaiting the follow-up LP………and waiting…and waiting…and then boom, they drop Your English Is Good, a two song single.

You know in context, this wasn’t a terrible idea.  Obviously the band was struggling to put together a second album amongst all the fervor, and rather than put out a shitty LP, they drop this brilliant little single (well, that’s what we hope).  Your English Is Good is another pop classic by TPC and you can hear the growth in the song.  The main force in the song is gentle hum of the keyboard, Monks’ lyrics are as strong as ever, and the shaking tambourine and yelled chorus are a dance-ready kick in the ass.  It’s a great song, no doubt about it.  The b-side is a step in a softer direction, a barely present acoustic little number that helps solidify how great Your English Is Good really is.

Alright, we were antsy and now we’ve been sated for the moment, but the nagging urge of a wanted second album still sits in the back of our minds.

We’re waiting TPC, we’re waiting.

:Tokyo Police Club - Your English Is Good:

Smith EP

So, at this point it’s been a year since A Lesson In Crime and TPC has yet to release a full length.  Instead three months later they release the Smith EP.  There’s a frantic pace to the three songs on this dreadfully short release that at least got me fired up again.  I was ready for a new release!  Box and Cut Cut Paste just drive and drive hard with A Lesson In Crime slowly riding in to the sunset on the back of a plinking piano riff.

The EP is strong, and it feels like the band is putting the pieces together right – the rock-pop, the softer shit, the group dynamic – all feel strong, and a new LP seems perched on the horizon.   

And then we wait.

:Tokyo Police Club - Cut Cut Paste:

Elephant Shell

And wait and wait and wait and wait and wait.  Listening to the albums over and over again as made me realize that the progression TPC has made is minimal in terms of changing their sound, but they’ve continued to craft pop gems and I’ve been happy.  Sadly, the wait between the Smith EP and Elephant Shell amped my expectations too high and when Elephant Shell finally drops I can’t do anything to hide my disappointment. 

After ten, twenty listens, Elephant Shell just isn’t that exciting.  It takes the basic TPC format, bouncy bass, Monks’ beautiful voice and hand claps and mechanically processes it.  There’s no energy in the album, seemingly no enjoyment.  It’s just eleven very similar, very short, tracks that don’t move forward.  We see no movement in terms of sound, no difference in feel – it’s another Tokyo Police Club album through and through.  Everyone’s saying that it’s a pretty perfect pop album, short, fast, nice to listen to, and I fully agree.  Elephant Shell is a good album from a good band, but what can I say?  I expected more from these guys.  The appearance of Your English Is Good is really the defining misstep.  It showcases what these guys can do when they’re firing all pistons, but also dates them.  This is one of their best songs and it’s way better than everything else on this album, and it came out a year ago.  I’m thinking about how good A Lesson In Crime is instead of how mind blowing this debut LP is. 

I can’t put a finger on what I expected but I wanted a step in some direction.  I don’t want TPC to stagnate amongst these similar sounds, I want them to move and grow and keep popping out songs that make me smile and nod, not shake my head and wonder what they’ve been doing with their time.

Tokyo Police Club is at a crucial point right now, or so I believe, they can keep moving forward, adjusting their sound, crafting new forms of pop-rock that we can all marvel at like we did when A Lesson In Crime dropped, or they can fall back on their old sound and fade away after another boring album.  I truly hope for the former, but the band’s break from studio production post-Lesson was a bad move, and I could see it happening again. 

Tokyo Police Club is touring right now and that’s a good thing, new fans are going to eat this shit up, but when touring time has come to a close, TPC needs to avoid nappy-time, they need to jump in to the studio and pump out an EP that challenges their defined sound.  I’m bored of TPC right now and I don’t want to be.

:Tokyo Police Club - Tessellate:

- Noah Sanders -

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