A lot of musicians aspire to make it big in the music industry through sweat and blood, but the usual result is yellowing pictures of glory days ed and distorted nostalgia.
This is the all too common fate of much underrepresented Canadian talent. But there are a few instances where this unfortunate trend relents. As Tokyo Police Club has proven, you may awake one day in the shoes of giants, playing to your own beat and living the dream.
With the release of their ambitious EP entitled A Lesson in Crime last year—which has been praised as one of the top ten rock albums of 2006 by Exclaim! magazine—Tokyo Police Club combine numerous elements of garage pop largely influenced by bands such as The Libertines and The Strokes.
“It was a lot of work, a lot of luck and a lot of being in the right place at the right time,” keyboardist Graham Wright said of the band’s quick rise to fame.“I don’t want to say that we haven’t paid our dues,” he said. “But you know there are lots of bands that work just as hard as we have—if not harder—and don’t achieve the same level of success, and I think we were just lucky enough to be making a certain kind of music at a certain time when people were ready for it.”
The barely legal age of Tokyo Police Club began playing together in high school in suburban
Newmarket. For years, drummer Greg Alsop, guitarist Josh Hooks, bassist/vocalist Dave Monks and
Wright spent time in Hooks’ basement strapping together melodies merely for pleasure.
They didn’t expect the fame they now enjoy until a stroke of luck came at the 2005 Montreal Pop Festival. While playing the festival, the band caught Toronto’s Paper Bag Records’ attention, who promptly signed the group onto the label’s growing militia of indie-rock talent, which includes Magneta
Lane and the FemBots. Although it was a difficult decision for band to exchange social normalcy for fame, it has proven to be a successful gamble. Since their break in 2005, Tokyo Police Club has booked an international tour and also scored a slot at this year’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Southern California alongside a reunited Rage Against the Machine.
“We just had a few really lucky breaks for ourselves and it all contributed to us simply having this amazing deal of success in a relatively short period of time,” Wright said. But Wright said he and his
bandmates are keeping themselves as level as possible while being flooded with critical praise
and attention.
“It would be really easy to let it go to your head,” he said. “I don’t want to sound arrogant but I can go on the Internet now and read a hundred positive reviews of our record. There are some articles saying that these guys are the next big thing and compare us to bands like the Strokes and Arcade Fire and just really, really big stuff.
“It would be really easy just to look at that and say, ‘You know what? I am the shit.’ “But you know, I still come back to my house when I’m not on tour and I still have to mow the lawn and shovel the driveway or clean the bathroom.”
Many of the band’s lyrics feature apocalyptic, sci-fi themes including despotic robots and explosive computer chips implanted in human hearts, which Wright said has lead to a collection of mistaken interpretations.
“When we were writing [“Citizens of Tomorrow”] we were worrying, ‘Will people think this is
a complete joke?’ But everyone has taken it as face value completely. “We have lots of people asking
us, ‘Do you guys have a bleak world view or are you worried about everything going to hell and
robots taking over?’ We’re not. I mean, we’re nerds, we like science fiction, we like Star Wars. We just wrote a song that was about the future that amused us.” Regardless of the subject or how the lyrics are read, the band has one goal in mind which is simply to “make sure the songs have no fat on their bones, being trim and short.”
The band is currently writing material for their second release and will be playing new songs throughout their current tour. If all goes well for this group of nascent suburbanites, we may gain some faith in the industry, and hope in those so-called pipe dreams. “Hopefully we’ll be able to continue making music for people and hopefully people will like it,” Wright said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to keep doing this for a living but if everyone hates it, we’ve done the best we can and that’s all we can do.”
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Tokyo Police Club play Alfie’s tonight with Will Currie & The Country French. Tickets are available at Destinations for $10 or at the door for $12. Doors open at 9 p.m.
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