Tokyo Police Club: Grow Up And Blow Away

Tokyo Police's Club's Elephant Shell will probably go down as the second-most hyped Canadian album in recent memory (still a country mile behind Arcade Fire's Neon Bible).

But the record, full of the same powerful pop that drove their A Lesson In Crime debut EP, isn't likely to disappoint anyone who sat on the edge of their desk anxiously awaiting the LP's release.

The Toronto via Newmarket, Ont. foursome are on the road from now until whenever, and they're also Chart's April 2008 cover artists.

ChartAttack caught up with the group at Toronto's Casa Loma.

ChartAttack: At about the time the Smith EP came out, the media really started a full-court "Where is the full-length?" press. Do you worry they've built Elephant Shell up too much?
Graham Wright: In the back of my head I always have a bit of trepidation the day before the reviews are supposed to come out. I'm fully expecting an internet backlash. I've pretty much given that up as a loss at this point.
Greg Alsop: I'm sure the bloggers have all banded together and decided that at least half of them hate us or will find something to hate about us.
GW: But that's the nature of the game. People are gonna hate you and the more you put out, the more people are going to be disappointed because they have all these expectations. We just live up to our own expectations and that's all we've ever tried to do.

Was the writing process difficult?
GA: Up until the last two weeks, we spent, pretty much since the time the EP came out, every day of rehearsal saying, "OK, we have to write the album. We just have to do this," and having no idea how to start, because there was no pressure before when we were writing the songs for the EP. We were just doing it for fun and writing songs we loved, and we had to get ourselves back in that head space. It was like, "Well, we're a rock band, and that's what we do best, so let's stop beating around the bush and do it."
GW: People ask if there was a lot of pressure from the outside, and of course there is. All the people who work with us are fond of saying, "There's no pressure, there's no pressure," and then they'll inadvertently say something that implies there is pressure. But I think we've been pretty good at ignoring that pressure. So it's just the pressure we put on ourselves to exceed our own expectations and top what we've done before. Every song we write, we want it to be better than the last one. And we have pretty high standards.

I watched an online interview where Graham said the band is a very democratic process. Did that slow things down at all?
GW: It's great when everyone agrees. I'd say it took us two years to make the record and it was like 22 months of everyone pulling in different directions.
GA: It's not even arguing. It's just disagreements where everyone says things theoretically, like, "Well, if you look at this album that the Beatles did," and then someone else is like, "Ah! But The Rolling Stones..."
GW: I think there was just a while where everyone had different ideas of how it was going to be and it wasn't even anything we could articulate. We couldn't really sit down and say, "I'm envisioning this." Dave [Monks] would write songs and so obviously he would have one really succinct vision of how he wanted things to turn out, and then we would hear the songs and offer three different interpretations. At first, it was really hard to reconcile all those interpretations, so we had to learn how to put them all together and make something that made sense.
GA: I think we did. Eventually we did. It came down to the last two weeks, where we were going into the studio in December. We had toured the new material. We had it mostly ready and we were like, "OK, we just have to figure this out, pare it down and come out with an album."
GW: We're all thrilled with how it turned out, because the process was grueling at times, but maybe that's what was necessary for us to figure out what needed to be done. And you know, we were lucky enough to build on the EP for so long that I don't think too many people got sick of us, and that gave us the time to let the new songs breathe and become what they needed to be. If [the album] had come out any sooner, I don't think they would have been nearly as good as they are.

Graham, you wrote on the band blog after recording that you understood the expression "sophomore slump," and described it as what happens when you try to please everyone. Is that what you guys tried to do initially in the writing and recording?
GW: I don't think so. It was always about trying to please ourselves, but, for a while, we were really conscious that it was the second album and we either needed to make a progression or stay true to our roots. And it was really hard to get out of those head spaces and just forget about them and just write the songs. At the end of the day, you're not trying to progress. You're just writing the songs and making them sound as good as they can. If it's progression, then it is, and if it's not then it's not.

How do you feel about the songs on Elephant Shell compared to the ones on A Lesson In Crime?
GA: I think they're a lot more thought-out. We definitely had a lot more time to think them out. I mean, all the EP songs were written in a span of six to eight months, and it was our first time writing songs. Everything was done on a whim. Sure, we'd go back and analyze them, but we definitely wouldn't take the time or care that we did with the songs on this album.
GW: The EP was songs by a band who were four guys in a basement looking at each other, just having a good time on a Friday night. Whereas the album was a band that spent two years touring, playing in clubs in front of people, so I think there's a difference in that these songs — they're not grandiose in any way — but they're a little bigger, more expansive, where the songs on the EP were small and a little more contained.

Did you ever consider slowing things down on the touring side to work more on the album?
GW: There was no time to consider it. We never slowed down enough to think about slowing things down.
GA: Yeah, it was just like, I don't want to say a whirlwind because that's so cliche, but stuff was just being thrown at us constantly. Like, I'd check my email in the morning and I'd approve five different things and say, "Yes, I can do all of that," and then I'd come back at lunchtime and there would be another five things. And it would be like, "OK, we have to do this, it's a really big opportunity." And it was like, "OK, we'll take it."
GW: When we started with the EP, we were going to keep things really small, and then things obviously started getting out of control. And we sort of had to follow it along. We spent two years touring the EP, and I think it was after the first year everyone kept saying it was going to wind down. But then this tour option would come along. We got the chance to do festivals in the U.K., and how can you not? Because of the nature of what was happening with the EPs, we were getting all these opportunities that would have been foolish to pass up. We've always thought it was a good idea to lay a good foundation. So if we have to tour like crazy people when we're 21 years old, when we're 30 years old we won't have to tour like crazy people anymore. Now's the time to get it out of the way.
GA: There's definitely been a couple months on end where I've seen my girlfriend two days in those two months.
GW: And you're sharing a bed with Dave every other night.
GA: Yeah, their faces just melt together.

Would you call 2007 a surreal year?
GA: Yeah, you never really get used to the fact that one day you're in Japan and then the next day you're home for one day, and then you're off to the U.K. You never settle into a mindset like, "OK, this is what I'm doing." You never have time to settle and accept it.
GW: But, at the same time, you're doing it, so it's really hard to back off of it and say, "Whoa, this is so weird." You're doing it and it's happening, so it's easy for people to look at it from the outside and say, "Oh my god, that's crazy." And it is, but for us it's just another day, another dollar. [laughs] I'm not that jaded.
GA: It's never another day, another dollar. We never see a dollar a day.

Anything weird happen during your summer touring?
GA: We played L.A. and this guy who met us from Interscope — I think he works for Shady Records as well — just became a fan, and he took us out to this really trendy hot spot club in L.A. afterwards and got us a private table, like, "Hey, these guys are with us." So that was weird. And then a Pussycat Doll showed up. The Pussycat Doll [Nicole Scherzinger]. And she nuzzled me. [The label guy] was like, "Yo, this guy plays in a band." She's like, "I sold six million records." I was like, "OK." And then there's a picture of us and she was nuzzling my face. I think the picture is her looking really suave and poised and me looking dazed.
GW: It's a great picture because it kind of sums up Tokyo Police Club's place in L.A., which is no place.