Tokyo Police Club Live
Callum Ballard & Jamie Gollings were whipped up into a frenzy under the arches
Canada has given us a choice, if scant, of alternative music in the last decade, with NME darlings, Arcade Fire and Crystal Castles both achieving critical acclaim with recent releases, although the chances are you’ve probably not heard of Ontario’s Tokyo Police Club.
Announcing themselves on Heaven’s dizzyingly tall stage with a huge burble of bass, the quartet break into their virally catchy opener ‘Favourite Colour’ whose chorus is unsurprisingly chanted by nearly everyone in the room. Given such a long set, fan favourites from early EPs are given a well received airing early on, as is a good chunk of the debut LP, ‘Elephant Shell’. All but two songs from ‘Champ’ also make an appearance (one unusual absentee being the brilliant upcoming single ‘Gone’). New material is eaten up by the crowd, from the jittery Synthesisers of ‘Bambi’, to the anthemic ‘Boots of Danger’, whose hook is sung long after they actually stop playing.
Front man Dave Monks stands at the edge of stage and demands the house lights go up in order for him to survey the throng below, and by all accounts he likes what he sees. He still has the air of a teenager playing his first ever gig; his giddy excitement is palpable and completely infectious, and that’s a large part of what makes this group so endearing. They’re a throwback to childhood and more innocent times; lyrical references to grade school, favourite foods and colours, Rubix’s cubes and even Disney films, for some reason, just work. And more than that, by the time they break out old singles ‘In a Cave’ and ‘Tessellate’ they have a whole venue whipped up into absolute frenzy.
This is all before Graham Wright’s synthesiser sings out the opening chords of their last and easily most famous song, ‘Your English Is Good’, which sends the front half of the crowd (including yours truly) into utter hysteria. But of course there’s being confident, and then there’s encoring with a Weezer cover. Happily, their rendition of ‘My Name Is Jonas’ is perfectly executed; far from the garage-rock sacrilege an inferior band would have surely committed.
