Tokyo Police Club

Saddle Creek to Release Elephant Shell

originally published April 2, 2008

Until September of last year, Tokyo Police Club had enjoyed a rather charmed existence as a band. Formed in Newmarket, Ontario, near Toronto in January 2005, the group, just a few months later, was accepted to play the prestigious Montreal Pop Festival - an event at which the band applied to play purely on a whim. Not only did Tokyo Police Club get the exposure that came with the gig at the festival, its performance caught the attention of the respected Canadian label, Paper Bag Records.

By February of 2006, the group had signed to Paper Bag and was in the studio, recording an EP, A Lesson in Crime. A seven-song, 16-minute blast of hooky guitar pop, the EP not only opened the door for the band to begin touring, it caught the ears of such influential publications as Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and England’s New Musical Express, which all gave the EP rave reviews.

Before all was said and done, A Lesson in Crime had sold an impressive 30,000 copies and Tokyo Police Club was established as a band to watch. But then came last September, the time when the band entered the studio to work on its first full-length record. What happened next was a whole different experience for the band.

Roughly 20 days after the start of the session, the band left the studio nowhere near having a finished album in hand. It was a disturbing moment, to say the least, according to drummer Greg Alsop. “We were kind of scared shitless,” Alsop said in a recent phone interview. “We had just spent like two and a half weeks in the studio and had nothing that we were really proud of. We were like ‘What happened to us? Have we made our best material and forgotten how to be a band?’ I don’t know, it was definitely very unnerving.”

The band took a pause and decided to go play some shows, hoping to find a groove in the familiar setting of the concert stage. It turned out to be just the right move for the band, which includes Alsop, singer/bassist, chief songwriter Dave Monks, guitarist Josh Hook and keyboardist Graham Wright.

“Right after we got out of the studio, we did two opening dates for Bloc Party,” Alsop says. “It was just a great experience to go out there and play the songs live again and be a band that works really well live together... It was like that’s what we always set out to do - be a live band. So, let’s just go back and write these songs as a band again and just make sure that everything that we are going to do in the studio we can do live ourselves at our shows.”

By the time Tokyo Police Club returned to the studio in November to take another run at recording, most of the 11 songs that would eventually land on the record, which is called Elephant Shell, had been reworked in major ways and the group had rediscovered its sound.

Elephant Shell promises to show significant musical growth for the band. As opposed to the blitzkrieg-style pop of A Lesson in Crime, Tokyo Police Club has learned to vary its tempos and diversify its sound - something Alsop says the band knew would be necessary in creating a full-length album.

“It would be really tiring to do an album of just song after song at 200 beats per minute,” he says. “[Elephant Shell] has a lot more flow to it, I feel.”

Alsop says he hopes fans will share the enthusiasm the band feels for Elephant Shell. And chances are, a much larger audience will pass judgment on the album. That’s because Elephant Shell will be Tokyo Police Club’s first release on Saddle Creek Records.

The band signed to the respected independent label (home to Bright Eyes and Cursive, among other notable acts) last summer. This represents a significant step up from Paper Bag, which has a much lower profile in the United States.

“[Saddle Creek] just seemed to be a label that was kind of at the level that we wanted to bring the band,” Alsop says. “They’ve done a lot with those artists that aren’t really mainstream friendly, but they’re selling hundreds of thousands of records.”

The group is now on tour, and will make Elephant Shell a centerpiece of its show, playing nine of the album's songs live. Alsop says Tokyo Police Club, as always, plans to rely on its honest energy to carry its shows. “Basically we just like to have that feeling where we are four people playing on stage,” Aslop says. “We don’t really use loops or anything like that. We want to have four people playing on stage all the time just giving their all. Hopefully that’s the spirit people take away from it - just four guys who are very passionate about the music and want to share that with as many people as possible.”

Alan Sculley