Tokyo Police Club

Tokyo Police Club
A Lesson In Crime (Paper Bag)
(3.5 out of 4)

A contagiously giddy live act, this Toronto four-piece introduces itself as one of the leading lights of this city's next-gen indie-rock scene and a band with pretty boundless potential on this debut EP. Shades of the Strokes, the Constantines, Death Cab for Cutie and numerous other au courant peers colour the group's croaked, geekboy vocals, spangly New Wave guitars, fuzzy keyboards and battered garage-band charge. Yet the lads slap their bittersweet pop melodies together with an offbeat bounce and hyperactive charm — to say nothing of an arcane lyric sheet that delivers sad-eyed missives to an exhausted world enslaved by "invading robots" and opens by demanding an audience with "the president of the world." The secret might well be Joshua Hook's guitars, which chirp, soar and ricochet around the rhythm section's spastic pulse, and David Monks's boyish yelp, most sublimely. When you hear "Nature of the Experiment" and "Be Good" on perpetual repeat in your head (and you will), it's often Hook's leads, not the choruses, that do the haunting. My new favourite thing. Ben Rayner - The Toronto Star

It may seem odd to make A Lesson In Crime -- the debut EP from a band barely known in their hometown of Toronto, let alone outside that city's borders -- a featured album. After all, its seven songs, clocking in at just over sixteen minutes, represent the complete recorded output of Tokyo Police Club, and naysayers may say, with some justification, this this is hardly enough to properly judge a band's talent.
Such doubters, however, would be wrong for two reasons. First, Tokyo Police Club's live show is incredible. The band is full of energy and brimming with confidence, and their songs could convince even the most staunch fundamentalist on the face of the earth to start dancing.
This, of course, leads into the second point: the seven songs on A Lesson In Crime are seven great songs. Despite the fact that this is just an EP (and a relatively short one at that), Tokyo Police Club made each song both irresistable and essential. There's "Citizens of Tomorrow", which is guaranteed to please people who love handclaps and singalongs. There's "Shoulders & Arms", which fulfills the album's "big rock song" quotient. There's the downtuned, Interpol-esque dance-punk of "If It Works" (and all that with a few handclaps and shouted "hey"s added in "Be Good"). "La Ferrassie" ensures the album has a slow, brooding finale. And the band even finds time to throw in a theme song, with "Cheer It On".
About the only problem A Lesson In Crime has is its length. Seventeen minutes after "Cheer It On"'s opening chords, you're left desperately wishing for more. Just three more songs, after all, would've made Tokyo Police Club's debut a full-length, and it's impossible to not wish that the band had added that extra few minutes. Even if the songs had been filler, the seven songs here would probably have been enough to make A Lesson In Crime an early favourite for the title of album of the year.
- Iheartmusic

The Boat was pretty packed on Friday night, and I walked in just as Tokyo Police Club hit the stage. I say I 'walked' but I more shoved my way through an entranced audience, getting a view anywhere near the front was absolutely out of the question. With good reason too, these guys are unbelievable.
Tokyo Police Club play a post-punk garage, stomping angular rock that gets the kids moving. I was into it – these guys are amazing. Beyond the frantic, measured guitar of Joshua Hook, you've got Gregory Alsop's crashing drums punctuated by Graham Wright's keyboards, all the while driven by David Monks' bass. They sound like they really like early Strokes records. Obviously there was more going on than that, but lead singer Monks sometimes sounds a lot like Julian Casablancas. He's got the same kind of raw, sort-of-punk attitude. His lyrics paint pictures of a near future that sounds bleak and nihilistic, hell, he even sings about girls. He covers a lot of territory really.
These guys respect their music. You can hear Joy Division, Wolf Parade, and The Smiths; you can even hear elements of the Stooges or Thirteenth Floor Elevators, even Pavement sneaks in there. These guys draw on a vast musical lexicon.
Tokyo Police Club have an incredible stage presence: they interact with the crowd and look genuinely happy to be doing what they're doing. From giant-flag-waving to handing out sparklers and inciting incessant rounds of clapping along, these guys have it.
I loved the show, well, except for something well beyond the control of the band. It was the omnipresent verbal diarrhea being spouted forth at an alarming rate by a local Toronto musician who will remain nameless. Throughout the entire set, he was loud and sort of inescapable. The thing is his music isn't even a fraction as good as Tokyo Police Club's. I finally asked him to shut-up.
These guys just announced their debut ep A Lesson In Crime, which will be released on Paperbag Records on April 18th. Buy it. They've got a handful of dates in Toronto in the meantime and you need to see these guys before they're so huge you can't get within 100 feet of the door, which is going to be really fucking soon.
~Matt Littlefair - Toronto Indie