STORY AND PHOTOS BY ROBERT SGOTTO
Tokyo Police Club may have originally been three words in a song, but it didn’t take the four-man indie group from Newmarket long to make it their namesake.
“Back when we were in high school, Tokyo Police Club was a lyric in a song,” said guitarist Josh Hook. “I don’t think there was any other band with the name club, or the word club at the end of it.”
Since their formation in 2005, Tokyo Police Club has three albums under their belt and amassed a large following. On Friday, the group played at Sheridan’s Marquee, along with Hollerado and Aukland, as part of a mini all-ages university tour. Before the show, Tokyo Police Club members Dave Monks and Josh Hook talked about taking a three-year hiatus and coming back with a new album, Forcefield.
To keep things fresh for their new album’s release in spring, they had to come up with new ideas.
“When you’re releasing a record, you wanna give clues a little bit at a time to build up anticipation and get people excited,” said Monks, lead vocalist and bass player.
“So we came up with this idea to put our tracks in crosswords,” said Hook. “It was a cool way to get people engaged and excited about the record that we’ve been excited about too,” he said, explaining their idea to put crossword puzzles containing their new album’s track list online and in their CD booklet.
Although the group has toured widely, including Europe and America, they were happy to be playing so close to home Friday night. “It’s always cool playing locally and cool to play around some of the great little towns near Toronto,” said Monks.
“At the end of the day, you’re going to a place to play music for people who came to see you perform, so it’s pretty sweet wherever we are,” Hook added.
“We’ve also toured a few festivals and we did this tour with Weezer about two records ago. It was the biggest slot we’d ever had,” said Hook. “Weezer was like the second concert I had ever been to, so to be the first of three support for that band was pretty sweet,” he said.
Of course, playing live shows isn’t all Tokyo Police Club has done together. The band appeared on Desperate Housewives and twice on The Late Show with David Letterman.
“Letterman, that was a good one. ‘Our next guests, Toyota Police Club!’ ha ha,” laughed Hook.
“How do you make that mistake? Like what?” Monks interjected.
Hook recalls the cue cards spelled the band’s name correctly, but Letterman said Toyota.
Paul Raley, Letterman’s assistant, called the host out on it and corrected him. “We ended up having 10 seconds of our album cover being broadcast to everyone, so it wasn’t a bad thing,” Hook said.
The indie trio of Aukland, Hollerado, and Tokyo Police Club drew a large crowd at the Marquee, and throughout the night you could hear the audience chanting and cheering for Tokyo Police Club.