Get Yourself Arrested - Tokyo Police Club

In the 9 months since the low key Canadian release of their 18 minute long, 7 track EP, Tokyo Police Club have become the hottest of properties in their native land, scored a major North American tour supporting Cold War Kids and are now ready to take on Europe. Gigwise meets up with the young pups at Sheffield’s Plug venue, on the eve of their first UK tour, to talk over how a collection of songs made with no expectation, has taken them so far.

Everyone loves a bit of home-grown. Fresh alternative music in 2007, thus far, has been all about the local talent. With The View, Jamie T and Klaxons tickling the top end of the charts, and the Enemy and the Twang creating ominous rumblings in the Midlands; there’s a rude healthiness to new British music right now. But where’s the foreign resistance? Where’s the dark and brooding émigrés with tall tales of foreign ports and dissolute artistic existence played out flea-ridden squats in Montmartre. Whilst tales of provincial life help romanticise our mundanity, it’s the impossibly glamorous invaders from which our big dreams do bloom.

Now, traditionally we look across the pond for help in these situations, but increasingly we’re looking across the pond, and then up a bit. From the anthemic Arcade Fire, through the ever-evolving Broken Social Scene to the glitchy electronica of Crystal Castles, Canada has produced some of the most inspiring and mind-bending music of the last couple of years. But it seems they’ve been holding an ace up their sleeve all along; poised to counter our guitar toting, small town playboys. Tokyo Police Club, for these are the aces, are an urgent, dissonant band of 21st century commentators whose ‘Lesson in Crime EP’ has perfectly captured the zeitgeist of imminent global meltdown - distilled it -  and set it to a collection of sparse unnerving electronic soundscapes segueing, invariably, into glorious cathartic rock n’ roll choruses. Like The Strokes in 2001, they arrive in our collective inbox at an absurdly full state of gestation for their average age of 18.

Greg (Drums, Percussion), Josh (Guitar, Percussion), Dave (Vocals, Bass) and Graham (Keyboards, Vocals) grew up in the same cookie-cutter Ontario suburb of Newmarket, falling in and out of bands for shits, but it wasn’t until Dave flew the nest and went to the University of Montreal that they made the slow realisation that the band meant everything to them. “I remember as soon as Dave went to university he was, like, phoning me every night with new chords,” says Graham. “And we were all emailing new parts of songs to one another that we’d worked-out. Then we got accepted to Pop Montreal (a small Canadian SXSW) and spent a week, in practise, devoting ourselves to the band and it just felt really good.”

It was time well spent, as Tokyo Police Club stormed Pop Montreal, triggering the big wave of hype that’s been stalking them tenaciously, ever since; leaving University but a nice, parent friendly idea. Their performance led to a deal on hip Canadian label Paper Bag records, some recording time with producer Jon Drew and the eventual release of their EP. “We had no plans after PM,” drawls singer Dave Monks. “But Paper Bag approached us and we had these seven songs that we decided to get down, and it ended up in this awkward 7 track 18, minute format. We were kind of worried it might compromise its progress, but Paper Bag were really cool and they let us release it as was.”