After the lengthiest silence in the band’s career, Tokyo Police Club announced their return last December with an ambitious, nine-minute slice of indie-pop in the form of Argentina (Parts I, II, III). We sent David Dooley to chat with vocalist and bassist David Monks ahead of their forthcoming Whelans gig.
Tokyo Police Club are renowned for writing short, snappy songs; only a single track from their debut album ‘Elephant Shell’ passes the three minute mark. So it was quite a surprise to see them return with the lengthy Argentina. What did they think when comments about their return focused on the length of the song more than anything? “We live in an age with an incredible abundance of music and a saturated marketplace and you need to have something like that in the headline,” explains David. “It can’t just be like ‘Tokyo Police Club come back with decent song”.
So was the song length a conscious decision to pick up some extra media attention? “Well the three-part thing came about really naturally. It was actually the first thing we made for the record so it wasn’t like a contrived thing”, but what about an overall game plan for album number three? “There was no game plan at any point in Forcefield. We didn’t know how long we were gonna write for, we didn’t know when we were going to start recording.”
After writing a staggering fifty-songs, which David describes as “like stabbing in the dark”, they eventually whittled that down to the best 13. Deciding which ones to discard was a fairly straightforward approach. “I guess the ones that didn’t hold up started to look not so good. They looked like expired food after a while. Like, oh that one’s embarrassing now.” With three albums under their belt David tells us of the new quality control aspect of their songwriting “We didn’t really have that figured out in the beginning and we’d get frustrated with the duds thinking we didn’t have the arrangement right and spend forever rearranging them”. What’s different this time around is that, “we were more aware that if Dave writes a good song and brings it to us we can make it a better song but if Dave writes a bummer of a song we can’t really save it you know?”
So does this mean that they’re only allowing solid gold at rehearsals? “I mean, we’ll give it a shot but I feel like I wouldn’t even bring anything I didn’t think was gonna fly.”
Tokyo Police Club closed their last album ‘Champ’ with Frankenstein, their most electronic song to date. Was this hinting toward a more electronic sound on ‘Forcefield’? “To me electronic is more of a tempo. It’s steady and grows as opposed to a really dynamic loud, quiet, loud, quiet… I feel like through and through Forcefield is a pretty rock and roll record. It’s guitar, bass and drums mostly and the keyboards are sort of the cherry on top. We were really picky about where we wanted to put the keyboards and that they were doing something. We didn’t want background keyboards.”
Informed listeners would have noticed David’s vocals talents appearing on the recent RAC ‘Don’t Talk To’ EP, alongside Kele Okereke from Bloc Party and Katie Herzig. So how exactly did that collaboration come about? “Well Andre is kind of a longtime friend. He told me about the project and asked me to work on some of his original, instrumental tracks that he sent me and I wasn’t feeling it. I couldn’t just throw a vocal on it but I said, “Hey, I’ve got this song Tourist, it’s got a verse and a chorus, do you want to work on it”? So I just sent him my demo with a rough vocal and he just rebuilt it with the music around it. Then he sent it back to me, I sang on it, added a bridge and then he worked on it a little more. So yeah, it worked out cool.”
Whilst not a new topic, or one that will be going away any time soon, the matter of Spotify and streaming sites in general. With bands all around the world still drawing their own lines in the sand we wanted to get Tokyo Police Club’s stance on it, “I feel like Spotify is really devaluing what a song is you know. It’s teaching people that it’s not something you have to pay for and I’m really hard pressed to say that a Spotify subscription compensates for listening to all that music.
So does this mean they’ll be giving streaming sites a miss when ‘Forcefield’ comes out at the end of the month? “At the same time I’d rather work within that system. I don’t want to pretend I live in an age that I don’t, I don’t want to pretend that we’re going to bring back vinyl or that our record is going to break that mold. And we’re not Radiohead so we can’t”.
Their Whelans gig on March 28th is a homecoming of sorts as it turns out, David is Irish. “I don’t know if you’re aware but I was born in Dublin. Last time I played Whelans it was one of our favourite shows to date and we ended up having a blast. I think that night in Dublin was really fun so we’re hoping for that mood again.” After a sneak peek at their tour diary, we spotted that they a day off after the Whelans gig. Are they preparing for a particularly bad hangover or will they be getting up to something a little more productive? “I can tell you that my uncle is very excited we have that day and he’s taking us to a rugby game which is cool.”
Tokyo Police Club play Whelans March 28th and Forcefield comes out on March 24th