Night 2 – Tokyo Police Club

At the tail end of January this year, Tokyo Police Club announced that the band was calling it a career. They would be embarking on one final North America tour to allow fans of their high-energy pop-infused indie-rock to revel one last time. They’re another of those late-aughts indie darlings that burst onto the scene with their EP A Lesson In Crime, and immediately grabbed the attention of listeners with cuts such as the instantly recognizable “Nature of the Experiment”, and the self-referential lead track “Cheer It On”. It was a record that landed on many critics’ “Best Of” lists that year, and firmly cemented the band on the radar of many in the Canadian Music Scene.

In 2008 the band dropped Elephant Shell, their full-length debut, an album that includes two more instantly recognizable gems in “Your English is Good” and this writer’s favourite, “Tessellate”. It also includes “In a Cave” and “Graves”, but like many other great Canadian acts, they are well known to their ever-expanding network of fans, but that never translated into

Tokyo Police Club (Graham Wright))

household name status. In the years that followed, the band released the fantastic sophomore Champ, followed by Forcefield and TPC over the decade.

During that decade, the band was no stranger to Halifax, having played here as part of the Halifax Pop Explosion in 2010, and then again in 2014 (sharing the stage with The Mounties and The Gay Nineties). They also returned in 2015 as part of the Red Bull Tour and were joined by local favourites Walrus and Rich Aucoin, as well as Attack In Black alum Spencer Burton.  Fortunately, when the Toyko Police Club farewell dates were announced, Halifax was second on the bill with a pair of dates booked for early August.

One thing the band has been doing as part of this tour has been polling their social media followers to vote on which album would be played in its entirety for each evening. In Halifax we got A Lesson In Crime for Night 1, and on Night 2 Champ was the record of choice (followed by A Lesson in Crime).  While many of those in attendance knew these shows would be the last time to see Tokyo Police Club live, it wasn’t evident. On both nights, the room was jam-packed with fans new and old who wanted to revel in these fantastic tunes one last time and pay their respects to one of the great indie-pop acts to emerge in the mid-late aughts. The band sounded as good as ever, and the energy in the room was full of love and positivity, and it was easily one of my personal favourite shows of the year. I’ve been lucky enough to see Dave, Graham, Josh and Greg a couple of times over their career, and I was grateful to be able to catch these farewell shows.  All the best, fellas! It’s been a great ride.

Tokyo Police Club

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