Tokyo Police Club was born with a band name generator site and a record mixed with Garageband on the keyboardist’s family computer. In 2005, the band submitted a demo to a poetry festival in Ontario and were “accepted kind of randomly,” said Greg Alsop, band drummer.
Alsop and the three other band members, David Monks, vocalist and bassist; Graham Wright, keyboardist; and Josh Hook, guitarist, began playing together because of their love for music. But, they didn’t originally have the ambition to play professionally.
Now Tokyo Police Club has released six full albums and has been nominated for several Juno awards, most recently this year for Alternative Album of the Year for their latest album TPC.
Alsop said their band has evolved a lot over the last 14 years. “It’s a lifetime, we’re all completely different people… in some respects.”
He said their album TPC is “significant” because it is the first album they didn’t feel required to produce. “It was a real choice to make it and to keep making music together,” Alsop said.
It was the first album the band wrote while living in different cities. They met at a church in rural Ontario every so often to produce the album.
The response to the new album’s release has been positive. “People just seem to kind of get it; it’s a fun, energetic album and it’s all really cathartic to make it for us,” Alsop said.
Alsop said his favourite song on the new album is One of These Days. “It’s an emotion that we haven’t really played with before, but it’s an emotion that feels like it caps off the album.”
The band will be coming to Fredericton to perform at the Boyce Farmers Market on Thursday, April 10. In partnership with the UNB Student Union, it will be the first time Tokyo Police Club has come to the east coast since 2006.
Alsop said the band is excited to be a part of the music scene in the Maritimes. “It’s a beautiful part of the country, beautiful communities and amazing people,” he said.
Alsop said the band is already working on another album and will likely produce more in the future.