Tokyo Police Club refine pop sound on new album

By Jason Herring, November 13 2014 —

You might not know it by looking at them, but Tokyo Police Club are one of the hardest working bands in music today.

The four-piece band from Newmarket, Ontario released their third full-length album, Forcefield, earlier this year —their first album in nearly four years. According to the band’s keyboardist, Graham Wright, they’ve kept busy during their hiatus.

“We toured a bunch, as we do, and it was just a matter of writing and recording, changing and editing, writing and recording,” Wright says.

The time spent on the album shows, as Forcefield is Tokyo Police Club’s most polished record yet. The album continues the path of their 2010 release,  Champ, and fully embraces a poppier sound.

This progression is most pronounced in the album’s lead song, “Argentina,” a three-part epic that is by far the longest song in the band’s discography, clocking in at just under nine minutes.

“[Argentina] was definitely the one that unlocked the whole project for us,” Wright says. “Once we had that one, we had a really good sense of where we hoped to end up, and then we started to work on everything else within the context that was provided by that song.”

Wright says their writing process has changed drastically since the band’s first two albums. He recognizes that the band’s experience has made it easier for the group to create their own unique sound.

“When you’re first starting you have no frame of reference on how to write a song, so you just try to copy songs you like and see where that goes,” Wright says. “You learn the craft, so you start working within your perception of your own craft as
opposed to someone else’s.”

The band embarked on a Canadian tour at the start of November. They are scheduled to play 28 shows in 35 days.

With a schedule that includes smaller cities such as Lethbridge and Nelson and nearly all shows being all-ages, the band is trying to make sure that as many of their fans as possible can see them play live.

“We’ve got a big contingent of young people who are into the band, and it would be silly to not give them access to the show. Why else are we going across the country doing this, if not to play to the maximum number of people as possible?” Wright says.

Tokyo Police Club will play at MacEwan Hall on Friday, Nov. 21 at 7:00 p.m. with guests Said the Whale and The Pack A.D.