Tokyo Police Club brought their wiry and futuristic post punk to the sold out Mercury Lounge in New York City for a show that felt like a ‘natural’ extension of their 2006 EP, A Lesson In Crime; which is to say that it felt like a rally for the human uprising against our robot masters; a call to arms in chants and handclaps. Stringing songs from Crime amongst songs off recently released Smith EP (as well as some new-fangled tunes), TPC delivered a frenzied and energetic gig soaked in heavy bass and blustery percussions.
Onstage, they are a mad ball of energy wound up and unleashed to play and stomp and shout until they wind down completely. Keyboardist Graham Wright is the extreme end of TPC’s energy spectrum, screaming to the audience through cupped hands, sans microphone, and slamming tambourine against palm so hard that I wasn’t sure which was going to break first. The palm won, sending a small piece of the tambourine flying towards the back wall during the last song.
As the Canadian quartet spun tales of adolescent slaves building spaceships at night (“Citizens of Tomorrow”) and plotting a rebellion against the Republic (“Shoulders and Arms”), their songs were delivered with such a suffocating intensity that the subjugation of man via GE almost seemed like a plausible scenario. Even when TPC’s tunes turn drowsy (e.g. “Be Good” or set-closer “If It Works”), they still feel like panicked fever dreams of the future. The staccato guitar riffs and fierce, open high hat drumming create a tension that is only amplified by the intensity of the keyboards.
This was a night of firsts for Tokyo Police Club: the first time they played a packed Mercury Lounge (“Last year we played here for about five people,” reminisced singer/bassist/Shaun White dead ringer Dave Monks), and also their first tour with encores—in this case Crime closer “La Ferrassie.” They handled it like a band who’d spent the last year building a devoted following of fans and critics, including recent “Nature of the Experiment” remixers The Go Team. The intensity never waned from start to finish (despite this being their 3rd NYC show in 4 days), and the songs felt as urgent and focused as they do on record. The Newmarket, Ontario natives played like a band with the whole weight of the world on their shoulders (& arms); a unified front charged with restoring hope amid a dystopian nightmare. So I was glad to see, upon exiting the venue, that everything appeared to be just as vaguely democratic as it was when I walked in. But, on my way up Houston Street, I did give an ATM a dirty look.
~John Frusciante
Photo: Alex Collados-Nunez
