Graham Wright, keyboardist, guitarist, and supporting vocalist of Tokyo Police Club, talked about accepting new sounds and dropping preconceptions while making Forcefield. The band played at Ritual Nightclub on Nov. 28.
How do you deal with the pressure of following up a critically-acclaimed album? What do you do when the label comes calling, asking for new material? For Tokyo Police Club, the answer was simple.
“We kind of stopped answering phone calls,” Wright said.
Forcefield, Tokyo Police Club’s third and most recent album, comes nearly four years after their second. Released in June 2010, Champ was an album that drew comparisons to The Strokes and made the band a staple in the minds of indie rock fans across the continent. But for Wright and the rest of the band, none of that mattered when it came time to write their latest record.
Wright explained Champ was a learning process, filled with the business pressures that come with signing a major record deal. This time around they wanted none of that.
“[We] cut everyone else out of it except for the four of us,” Wright said of writing Forcefield, “it was the easiest creative process we’ve gone through.”
Forcefield musically separates itself from previous albums.
“We were just way off on an island of our own devising,” Wright explained. “Everything was on the table.”
The creative liberation led to the album’s first track, “Argentina,” an eight-and-a-half-minute epic filled with layered synths and a complexity distinct to Forcefield.
“[‘Argentina’] was the one that unlocked it, it was like the Rosetta Stone.”
In the years leading up to Forcefield, Tokyo Police Club contemplated approximately 50 different songs to put on a new album, but once they wrote “Argentina,” Wright said it became easier to judge which direction the album was going.
Similar to their mentality in writing Forcefield, when Tokyo Police Club arrived in Ottawa on Nov. 28, they didn’t take expectations into consideration. Their hour-and-a-half set saw David Monks, the lead singer and bassist, jump the barrier and venture into the middle of the crowd during one song, eventually returning to the stage wearing a baseball cap courtesy of a charitable fan.
Never at a loss for words, Monks frequently burst into great pre-song rambles that never seemed to follow any linear thought—but in the moment, the crowd loved it and responded with fierce appreciation.
“You’re coming to my birthday party, and I’m coming to yours,” he shouted into the mic before singing the lyrics of “Breakneck Speed.”
Wright commented before the show that with the new material from Forcefield, the band could focus on playing songs they enjoy performing. Their enjoyment of the music came across in an upbeat and celebratory demeanour throughout the set, highlighted by an impromptu rendition of “O Canada” at the end of the night.
Fans who arrived early were treated to powerful sets from Vancouver bands The Pack A.D. and Said the Whale.
“This is the third or fourth full tour with them,” Wright said of Said the Whale. “It’s like an old comfortable sweater.”
