Tokyo Police Club Abandon Hope For A Normal Life

Newmarket, Ontario's Tokyo Police Club are really nice guys. At their fiery live shows, they wave a friendly flag in the air and hold up signs emblazoned with their band name in case you forget who they are. While singer/keyboardist/nice guy Graham Wright was being interviewed by ChartAttack on his cell phone while in a van on his way to New York City for the CMJ Music Festival, his phone died. Wright soon pulled over, went into a truck stop, plugged in behind a vending machine and called back to complete the question period. No wonder that even their parents love them.

"Do our parents like us more lately?" Wright asks rhetorically. "Yes, a lot more.

"There was definitely some friction at first, and naturally. Who wants to see their kid abandon all chance of a normal life and get in a van? But now my dad emails me our press from the internet and my mom clips it out, and people's moms help out.

"I'm also generally a very lazy and unmotivated person, so, with this band, they've seen me try and work hard for an extended period of time. They're bowled over by that."

Many have been bowled, knocked or tripped over by this electric indie rock foursome. It was only this past spring that their debut EP was released by Toronto's Paper Bag Records. Now the EP is being released in the U.K. via Memphis Industries and the band will tour there after a month-long jaunt in western Canada. But they're still shocked people like them.

"Every time I find about someone who isn't my parent or my girlfriend that genuinely likes our band, it always surprises me," says Wright. "It's shocking when people come up to us after a show and say, 'Hey, I love your band.'

"In the back of my mind I'm always trying to think, 'Do I know you from somewhere? Did I do something for you?'"

They shouldn't be so shocked. A Lesson In Crime topped many a Canadian college chart this past year, and TPC have no shortage of fans for their futuristic garage romps. They should be around for a while longer, too. After a wintery January-February break, the band hope to write new material, as they've written very little on the road so far. In a perfect TPC world, they'd like to record their first full-length in March for a spring release. If they all keep getting along so well, that just might happen.

"We played a show in Alabama and were sitting around behind the stage drinking water and talking, and someone from another band came up to us and said, 'You guys are in a band together and you're still sitting at the same table together talking?'" Wright says. "We bicker and argue like anyone who's in a van every day for a month, but we still like each other and get along very well."

Here are Tokyo Police Club's tour dates:
Nov. 16 Victoria, BC @ Logan's
Nov. 17 Vancouver, BC @ Gallery Lounge
Nov. 18 Nelson, BC @ The Royal On Baker
Nov. 21 Canmore, AB @ The Canmore Hotel
Nov. 22 Lethbridge, AB @ Tongue 'N' Groove
Nov. 23 Calgary, AB @ Broken City
Nov. 24 Edmonton, AB @ Power Plant
Nov. 25 Saskatoon, SK @ Louis' Pub
Nov. 26 Winnipeg, MB @ The Collective
Dec. 1 Guelph, ON @ Vinyl
Dec. 2 Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern