It can’t be an easy life for an indie band. The labels want them all to sound the same, easily pigeon-holed for those light on imagination, easily marketed by a simple ‘for people who like (insert band name here)’ sticker on the
jewel case.

The ‘true’ fans, the die-hard mp3 blogging, Pitchfork-baiting, ‘I was there when they weren’t cool’ disaffected generation want something different, something their parents will balk at and the Topshop crowd won’t latch on to.

Unfortunately, both sides of the coin end up generally unpleasant to the palates of those who simply want some great music. Music with great hooks and great lyrics. Music without prejudices, social status, and ‘it’s cool because it sounds like a migraine’ aesthetics. That middle ground is frustratingly hard to find. The advent of bands such as The National, Modest Mouse and Okkervil River has shown us how indie music can be accessible, heartfelt and still original and vibrant. But for each one of those, there are ten bands with punctuation in their names and an unhealthy obsession with the bastardisation of the terms ‘psychedelic’ and ‘progressive’. To the ranks of those still fighting the good fight ¬- and winning - add Tokyo Police Club.

The Canadian foursome met at high school in Newmarket, Ontario and have been playing under various monikers ever since. Their debut EP, A Lesson In Crime, won them their fair share of admirers and a plethora of enthusiastic reviews. The only derogatory remarks were mainly in connection with the EP’s brevity.

“When we started writing it kinda happened by accident,” says frontman Dave Monks. “We weren’t timing ourselves. And then people came to us and said ‘Oh your songs are ridiculously short’ but I feel we put everything in there that we need to put in there. I mean, we could play the chorus a couple more times if people really wanted to hear it but we don’t feel the need to. It’d be redundant to play it out for another minute or so.”

Elephant Shell sees Tokyo Police Club adhering to a ‘if it ain’t broken’ modus operandi. Only one of the 11 songs dares to wander beyond the boundaries into the wilderness that lies past the three minute mark. But there is definitely wisdom in their brevity. Opener ‘Centennial’ rides a syncopated drumbeat and comes off like Death Cab with all the annoying whiney bits taken out and some much needed muscle added. And handclaps. Lots of handclaps. Tokyo Police Club like handclaps and that’s only ever a good thing. The buoyancy of ‘Centennial’ carries over into the next ten songs. Amongst the short running times, handclaps and jagged guitars, the quartet manage to still sound raw and vibrant.

Though the above concoction may give the impression that Elephant Shell is a lightweight, happy-clappy affair, Monks’ lyrics still have the offbeat charm and tendency to be oddly affecting that they displayed on earlier efforts like ‘A Lesson In Crime’ and the space ballad version of ‘Citizens Of Tomorrow. Still Elephant Shell sounds as if it was as much fun to record as it is to listen to. Not exactly, according to Dave Monks.

“We kinda did it twice. Last September when we were done touring, I guess it was time to go into the studio and we didn’t know that we were entirely ready and we didn’t feel entirely prepared but we reckoned we could just go in and write the remainder as we recorded it. So we spent three weeks in Connecticut doing that with Peter Katis. At the end of it we went and played a couple of shows with Bloc Party. They were just really good live, energetic shows and seeing Bloc Party was so great and it just triggered us to think about what we’d just done and we realised that we really hadn’t been ready to go into the studio and the work that we’d done in those three weeks wasn’t the Tokyo Police Club that we liked and didn’t have the dynamics of a four piece band. We spent October touring and then in November we decided to just scrap all that and we started rehearsing again and started writing the songs the way we liked and using what we’d learned and then we recorded it all again in December.”

In the movie business, news that a director has been replaced or reshoots have been necessary is usually an enormous warning sign. It’s rare that any troubled production turns out for the better. Thankfully this does not apply to Tokyo Police Club. And when you consider that Elephant Shell is essentially the band’s debut album, it took some amount of nerve to turn to their new record label and tell them that the original sessions were being binned.

“It’s kinda important to feel like you can do that,” says Monks, “because after a certain point there’s so much momentum behind that you need to know that, even though it’s such a big machine, you can say stop if you’re worried about your music.”

As for Saddle Creek, who must have been wondering what the hell they gotten themselves into: “It was kinda insane,” Monks says, “putting out a record is an expensive thing. ‘Hey, remember all that money you gave us? Well, we’re ditching that’. They were cool though. We ended up doing the re-recording out of pocket.”

There has been a lot of hype about Tokyo Police Club ever since A Lesson In Crime and for such a young band, following that success was always going to be daunting.

“Yeah, definitely,” agrees Monks, “I think that’s why we felt pressure to go into the studio early. It’s a really good way of finding out that you really do have to just tune all the pressure out and do what really makes you happy. You kinda get that gut feeling when you know you’re doing something right and you have to stick to that and not worry about what people could be thinking. If there was one way of dealing with the pressure of making a good record as a debut or a follow-up, it’s to put eleven good songs on it and if you have eleven good songs on it then it can’t really be a bad record.”

Those who seek out the bonus disc version of Elephant Shell will be rewarded with a cover of The Rentals’ (best known as Matt Sharp’s post-Weezer band) classic ‘Friends Of P’.

“It actually came about in quite a cool way,” says Monks. “When we played Letterman the first time, it was at the time that The Rentals were looking to put together a tribute record. They had a bunch of other artists lined up for various Rentals songs but they were holding out ‘Friends Of P.’ because I guess they were looking for the right candidate for that song. When they saw us on Letterman they were like ‘Oh that’s the band’. So we got a call personally from The Rentals asking if we’d do the song and of course we said yes.”

Of course…