- Release date:
- April 22, 2008
- Artist/Band name:
- Tokyo Police Club
- Record label:
- Saddle Creek
- Official Web Site:
- http://tokyopoliceclub.com/
- Overall User Rating:
-
(0 ratings)
Why you should care: Zipping through 11 tracks in slightly more than 29 minutes, the album doesn’t feel rushed—it’s just a satisfying debut that’s fun without sounding desperate to entertain. “Elephant Shell” is a noticeable step up in songwriting from “A Lesson in Crime.” Both whiz by your ears, but the EP felt a bit more frantic, like someone sprinting past you, while the full-length’s more like a distance runner who happens to be the quickest guy in the field. Singer Dave Monks is still a little nasal but is more often endearing rather than grating.
Verdict: Sing-alongs, handclaps and supplemental instruments like keyboards and a vibraphone are all used sparingly—maybe even too sparingly. More problematic is the odd feeling that some tunes simply don’t stick (“Nursery, Academy” and “Listen to the Math” are particularly forgettable), perhaps a product of having better melodies than actual songs, or just because of Monks’ unmemorable phrasing. Still, stuff like “Juno” actually becomes catchier the more you listen to it, in simple but difficult-to-achieve ways that make these youngsters’ Strokes-esque sense of pop craft all the more impressive. There would be no need to stretch out the airtight hooks of “Tessellate” or “Your English is Good” for more than two or three minutes, and the record’s brevity is a mostly justified sign of the band’s confidence in its tracks.
X-Factor: Tokyo Police Club didn’t learn to play their instruments until their senior year of high school—yet another indication that, these days, the distance between an 18-year-old nobody and a successful touring musician can be covered in just a few songs and a couple of blog postings.
