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Here is a bit of advice for you all before we get started, if you ever have to stand outside a club waiting to go and interview a band, and feeling decidedly nervous about it, try to make sure the club isn’t, on most nights of the week, a gay bar. You get some funny looks…
But anyway, I digress. The reason for the nervousness was me being about to interview a member or members of Tokyo Police Club, who you might remember from a while back on the site. The band, originally from Ontario, Canada have been around for a few years now and had, in my opinion, the unenviable badge of the ‘Canadian Strokes’ applied to them from early doors by some sections of the music press. Having release the second album Champ this summer, they are currently in the UK promoting it. It’s been a while since they were around, and as I’m a self confessed ‘big fan’ I thought I’d try and get an interview, not expecting that anyone would want to talk to the stuttering, spotty faced student like me. Turns out, they did and…well this is how it went.
I was met by Graham Wright, the band’s keyboard player and after setting up we got chatting. He was a decent, down to earth kind of guy, who didn’t seem one bit like the ‘ego on legs’ type that seems to be the rock band stereotype, either that or I’m a terrible judge of character. Talking about the fact that it’s been two years since the band’s debut album Elephant Shell hit the shelves he didn’t seem the least bit phased that there had been such a gap preceding the release of Champ, the band’s latest effort. As he pointed out, there’s no point deliberately trying to write music that is ‘in with the zeitgeist’ of the time, because to paraphrase his words, you’re doomed if you do that.
Indeed, it seems like the whole band is as chilled as this attitude suggest. They’re certainly no bunch of hipster kids (and I mean that as a compliment). One of the most interesting things to come out of the interview (for me at least) was when we turned to talking about the differences in recording Champ compared to Elephant Shell and Lessons in Crime, the bands most prominent earlier releases. A lot of the music press at the time of Elephant Shell’s release seemed a little disappointed by some of it. Turns out the album was recorded in three weeks, which for a band in today’s music industry, with the degree of ‘hype factor’ TPC had at the time, is an incredibly tight schedule. Champ on the other hand, was recorded in three months in LA, away from the bands native Canada after a conscious decision to ‘take more time’ on the record. Graham admitted himself that ‘everything was different’ between the recording of the earlier material this year’s album and perhaps that was why, in my own opinion at least, it was a better album, whatever that means. (Although my entire theory gets a little knocked when you factor in the fact that A Lesson In Crime was recorded in three days).
Now the interview was conducted in the bar/lobby of Heaven, near the Strand in London. If you haven’t been there then it is a medium sized venue, along the same lines as say Scala. It’s no pub back room then. However, Tokyo Police Club are a band who’ve played the likes of David Letterman in America (among other similar TV shows) and have even featured in an episode of Desperate Housewives So you might think they would be a little out of place in rooms of such comparatively small size, right?
Turns out that you’d be wrong if you made that assumption. As you might expect playing live to a TV audience of millions is pretty terrifying and the best part seems to be afterwards when you can ‘hang out and have a drink’. As I’m never likely to play David Letterman, or any venue outside of possibly a small room full of disinterested people I’ll take his word for it. But they seem, from the vibe I got, to feel more at home in smaller venues. Certainly a ‘once a year’ event like a massive live TV broadcast of big festival doesn’t seem to have affected their desire to put on a good show for smaller audiences.
Graham admitted himself that he wasn’t thinking about the band’s third album yet, although Dave Monk (the bands Bassist, Vocalist and principal songwriter) probably is, ‘songwriters write songs all the time’ after all. He also gave an insight in to the band’s song writing method as ‘different for every song’ varying from a whole band jam style approach on some songs to occasions when Dave will ‘just turn up’ with an idea in his head of exactly how a part should sound. There was also the mention of long discussions of whether ‘the bridge to a song should be 8 or 16 bars long’. Those of you who thought that being in a successful band was all fun and games think again!
As the interview wrapped up, I only had ten minutes of question time we ran through a few final things. Turns out the band don’t mind the ‘Canadian Strokes’ title they were given because at least they were being compared to a ‘good band’ and they are all self-confessed Strokes fans. Indeed when I asked for a list of fours bands he’d like to see headline a festival he was playing or watching the answer was ‘Radiohead, The Strokes, Paul McCartney’ and after a pause, ‘Tokyo Police Club in a few years time’ which was delivered with a little smile.
The best part of being in a band? Hanging out with your friends and getting to do something you love as a job. I can certainly see that being high in terms of job satisfaction to say the least.
And then that was that, I left (after struggling to open the venues front door and looking like a twat in the process) and felt a little bit gutted to be missing the show. I’d certainly recommend anyone who gets the chance to see them to go. The new album, as I’ve said before, is a killer and I certainly can’t imagine them being a disappointment live.
Until next time then, enjoy.
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