TOKYO POLICE CLUB - Elephant Shell

The full-length debut of Canadian band Tokyo Police Club has perhaps been a little too long in coming, given that the quartet, let's not forget, has been active for almost two years now, during which it released singles and EPs of decent interest, greeted with a fair amount of enthusiasm by NME and the like.

We're dealing here with music built on a markedly indie framework, with all the trimmings: bare-bones instrumentation, drum lines that are straight and overly regular (not to say monotonous), a nasal, subtly detached voice (in several spots annoyingly sing-song and involuntarily hypnotic), post-punk guitars (more English than American) that inevitably end up painting in choruses that are often predictable and, on the whole, rather limp.

Speaking in very general terms, one could venture that this band sounds like a not always perfectly balanced synthesis of Strokes, Grandaddy (especially in attitude), Bloc Party (perhaps the most obvious influence, especially with reference to their first album) and Editors.

The record won't disappoint fans of the aforementioned bands and will, all things considered, entertain genre devotees, though there remains a clear sense of a band that arrived at its debut already a bit out of breath and with its imagination somewhat dulled; the ideas on offer aren't exactly plentiful, and the band's sonic repertoire certainly doesn't shine for variety or unpredictability.

The opening track, "Centennial", sounds like a Placebo cover as done by Sonic Youth, pairing an innate melodic bent with a roughly thrown-together execution, but the overall feel is too neatly "combed" and almost completely lacking in any notable surges or changes of pace. "In A Cave", in terms of arrangement structure, closely recalls a more sluggish version of the Strokes from their second, controversial album "Room On Fire" (hardly a record to hold up as a model, and I doubt there's much disagreement there), and yet the track is rather dull, built around a chorus that's barely adequate. What's entirely missing is that imperceptible shift, that instrumental spark or even a simple acceleration that could open up space for genuine sonic fascination. The songs are full of dead air and leave behind a sound that often feels hollowed out, if not downright anemic, which is all the more surprising given the young age of the band members, which in theory should have guaranteed more nervous energy in the arrangements and a livelier performance.

There's certainly something worth salvaging (the opening of "Tassellate" works, for instance, as does the hardened anger of "The Baskervilles", along with the blend found in "Your English Is Good", poised between late-period Talking Heads and early Strokes), but the band doesn't yet seem to be fully in command of its own songwriting potential, relying as it does on a single, rather worn-out and overly familiar concept of the rock song, one that's already been mined in every intimate facet by hundreds of indie bands over the last five years.

In times (like today) of merciless competition and short-term musical memory, when everyone becomes a rock idol at the speed of light, Tokyo Police Club will struggle hard to win themselves a stable following, or even just a bit of distracted attention from the bloggers that matter.

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27/05/2008