FEATURE: Tokyo Police Club Continue to Arrest Fans Despite Lack of A Full Album

With one EP and scarcely 16 minutes of music released in their brief 18 month lifespan, Tokyo Police club have become a sensation of sorts. They have played Coachella, traveled across the pacific to play a gig in their namesake city in Japan, and just days after The Marquee caught up with keyboard player Graham Wright, they would take the stage at the legendary Glastonbury Festival in England.

“We’ve been asked to play a few festivals this year, we’re doing a bunch in the UK and we’ve done Coachella and Sasquatch already. Cochella was the first one that we got the offer for and that was just incredible. It is just one of those big things that you hear about when you’re a kid and you think ‘wouldn’t that be cool if we could drive out to California and go to Coachella.’ Obviously to be asked to play it was really flattering. Then to be asked to play Glastonbury, which is sort of the Great Grandfather of every festival particularly for people like us who grew up on Radiohead and hearing about the legendary Glastonbury performances by bands that we just loved, is pretty indescribable.”

While Glastonbury and the other festivals TPC will be playing this summer will expose the band to hundreds of thousands of new ears, they owe the most to the very first festival they ever played. Pop Montreal. “Pop Montreal is pretty different from Glastonbury in that it is more like South By Southwest. It is a whole bunch of club shows all happening at the same time,” Wright said. “It really isn’t an exaggeration to say that we wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Pop Montreal. At that time we had really finished with the band and as far as we were concerned we were just doing it for fun. Everyone was going off to University or a job and we had decided we would get together again later have some more fun, but that’s about it. Being asked to play that festival gave us a reminder of how much we loved it and it came at the right time it gave us a kick and the motivation to try it out for real.”

It wasn’t long after Pop Montreal that the band entered the studio to try their hand at recording some of their songs. The result, their debut EP A Lesson In Crime, clocks in at 16:19 which is shorter than some singles out there today. However, the EP sports 7 songs the longest of which runs a scant 2 minutes and 49 seconds. Despite its brevity A Lesson in Crime gives a tantalizing taste of what this young band is capable of.

“Since we finished the tour with the Cold War Kids a couple of months ago, we’ve been writing,” Wright revealed. “We have this garage in Toronto that we share with another band and we’ve been going in everyday. It’s hot and smelly because of us, but we’ve been working on stuff really intensely and we have seven new songs that we are going to play on tour this summer.”

While they just recently moved out of their suburban childhood homes, the whirlwind of their ride hasn’t given these early 20 somethings too much time to spend in their new urban digs. “No one except for the four of us have been there every day from the get go. In the van, playing shows, recording, doing interviews or whatever,” said Wright. “It doesn’t feel like one day I stepped out shielded my eyes against the glare and thought ‘wow, I’ve made it,’ because we’ve been working as hard as we can for this and we can see that it is paying off. But we have also been able to see every little step it has taken to get here.”

When festival season draws to a close and things slow down a bit, Wright and his band mates, Dave Monks (Bass & Vocals), Josh Hook (Guitar), and Greg Alsop (Drums) will get to really experience living on their own as they go back into the studio to work on their debut LP.

Wright admitted that while he was initially skeptical of what their second shot at song writing would yield, he is thrilled with the first seven songs they have demoed for the album. With the LP slated for a February 2008 release, fans may be disappointed to find out that they will have to wait for some time to be able to take these songs home with them. Until then they will have to be satisfied with catching these youngsters tear it up in clubs across Europe and North America this summer.

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