Arresting Perspiration: Tokyo Police Club

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

BARS AND CLUBS can get hot and stinky during the summer months. So if you're hopping and dancing around onstage, grinding on your ax with lights glaring on you, you know it's going to get really uncomfortable.

"We're all pretty energetic on stage, and even at the best of times, in the dead of winter, we end up being pretty disgustingly sweaty," said Tokyo Police Club keyboardist/vocalist Graham Wright. "The show we played in Austin [Texas] was ridiculous. We were literally wringing our shirts out afterward and they were dripping water all over the place."

The Toronto-based band has toured relentlessly since July, with no end in sight until September, so the quartet can well attest to antiperspirant needs. But for the group and its fans, sweat and excitement is part of the package.

As heard on its two EPs — "A Lesson in Crime" and "Smith" — Tokyo Police Club makes fast, peppy indie pop, with strong synth-dance melodies and straight-up rock. The band's slowly but surely garnering praise both in the States and in the Great White North, and its recent signing with the Saddle Creek label — home to Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes — attests to the buzz. Coincidentally, the record deal comes just as Tokyo Police Club started its first headlining tour.

"We've been through a bunch of these places doing support slots or opening slots saying, 'Next time we come back here, it's going to be awesome. We're going to headline,' Wright said. "This is the tour that's all finally happening. We're headlining and people are coming out to see us. It's really a great feeling. It's cool to know we're at a stage we can do that."

The nonstop touring and stage acrobatics can get exhausting and even Wright admits he has no idea where the quotidian energy comes from. "It continues to baffle me. Last night is a perfect example. We had just flown out of our tour to play a show in Canada and flown back that day. In two days, we got about five hours of sleep. It's midnight and we're playing the show and it's exceedingly hot and I thought, 'There's nothing left in me to possibly give to this performance.' But then you just get up there and start playing and you kind of forget. It doesn't occur to you that maybe you're tired, and then the show's over, and you're like, 'How'd I do that?'"

Then again, Wright said, "I've never really had a show where I've not been able to get into it."

While touring, Tokyo Police Club is also trying out material for its forthcoming full-length, which Wright said the group should start recording in September. The songs, he said, have received a good reception, but with the usual growing pains.

"Our new songs are still two-minute-long, up-tempo pop songs. I think it's pretty easy for people to listen to them and bop their heads and cheer when they're over," Wright explained, while noting, "There are a couple songs that are slower and sparser than what we've done before. Sometimes you can get that uncertainty when they end, but I think that's more that nobody knows them. It's always kind of unnerving when you finish a song and everyone [is] silent for a second."

» Rock & Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NE; with Ra Ra Riot and Jukebox the Ghost, Tue., 9 p.m., $12; 202-388-7625.

Written by Express contributor Katherine Silkaitis

Photos courtesy Tag Team Media