The law won

>>Tokyo Police Club incite
the kids and abide the authorities

BOOK ’EM: Tokyo Police Club

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Yes, we all live with our parents in Newmarket right now,” says keyboardist Graham Wright, “but that’s about to change.”

Tokyo Police Club are playing Tokyo in May, in what’s bound to be a “mission accomplished” moment for the young band from small-town Ontario. Wright, drummer Greg Alsop, guitarist Josh Hook and singer/bassist David Monks had been playing together since 2000, and were about to part ways for university after a series of tepid Toronto gigs in 2005, when a Pop Montreal appearance led to a deal with Paper Bag Records.

The rush of breakneck rhythms, the melancholy wake of reverberating guitars and keys and the cautionary tenderness of lyrics about our future robot overlords, all features of Tokyo Police Club’s debut EP, A Lesson in Crime, have earned them a substantial following, even beyond Canadian borders. The band is still coming down from a sizeable stint at SXSW, where they played five shows and shook countless hands, and psyching themselves up for Japan, California’s Coachella festival, a pair of sets at Whistler’s winter blowout and, with their current tour-mates Cold War Kids, three sold-out shows in New York City. The Mirror caught up with Wright to talk about the pros and cons of being an underage band.

Mirror: Has being under 21 created any problems for you at U.S. shows?

Graham Wright: A couple of times. I mean, we don’t expect people to break the law—I don’t even really drink on tour, I’m not expecting anyone to serve me, but it’s nice to have a dressing room. Once, in Seattle, we were already in the dressing room when they found out we were under 21, and they came in, cleared out all the liquor and posted this big, intimidating [bouncer] outside the door who’d look at you askance if you tried to leave. I guess they had to do it, but it seemed a bit heavy-handed at the time.

Then, in Chicago, we weren’t headlining, so we couldn’t ask the venue to clear out all the booze and screw the other bands. We couldn’t even hang out in the restaurant downstairs, but fortunately there was a really nice little bookstore around the corner, so that was our dressing room.

M: I understand that some of you abandoned studies at McGill and Ryerson to be in the band full-time. I guess there’s plenty of time to go back.

GW: I’d love to go someday. We’re really lucky that we’re doing this while we’re still young. We’re testing the waters now, and if it works, that’s awesome, but if all of this goes in the toilet tomorrow, we can go back to university in September. We have nothing to lose.

M: Do you see yourself playing music as an old man?

GW: I’m not gonna be in a rockin’ band when I’m 75, but I can play music in some capacity. Actually, my mom told me about a study that found that even patients with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, who don’t remember anything of their lives, [retain] their musical memory. If you play them a song that they knew when they were 16, they’ll still recognize it, and if they played the piano, they’ll remember how. I find that really comforting, that you can always count on music.