Scene It All Before
Dang. I used to think this band had other good songs when Nature of the Experiment started getting played in Toronto bars. Two years later and all they've produced that comes close to making me happy like that is Your English is Good from Elephant Shell, which is still lukewarm. What makes it worse is that everyone else at the Scala LOVED it and danced around like blind, maniacal party members.
Chris O'Dowd was in the lobby and was politely signing autographs. He stood behind me in the hall later and I asked him if he liked Tokyo Police Club and he laughed, "yeah man, I love them!" and then I asked him if my friends were behind him because I couldn't find them. He didn't know and moved on, hurriedly. To be honest, I had no idea who he was until people explained the IT Crowd to me, and even then I suspected he was really some sort of magician.
Anyway, in the interest of describing the gig in its entirety, I've mentioned his presence. He stood in the VIP section for the whole show and I don't think he danced. Some people stared at him instead of Tokyo Police Club during the gig, which must have sucked for him, and the band ... and the people staring at some actor while a band plays, even if the show was kind of lame. And I'm even lamer because I stared at the people staring at him, wondering why why why? I blame TPC for putting on a show that didn't engross me enough.
So, TPC. They are young and very very nice when they talk onstage. They do not have an extensive backlist, which is part of the problem, so they do a cover song by a band I've forgotten the name of. It's soft, though, without the vitality that I expected of them. It's as if they've aged prematurely, and now they're making less music-oriented-around-handclaps funtimes. I hate that.
I wish this band hadn't toured A Lesson In Crime, but instead had kept under the radar until they had something angrier and more childish to shout/scream/say. I did like Graham Wright's intense staring-at-the-wall-while-playing-keyboard dance, and his surreptitious quaffs of red wine during the gig and its encore. Nice. But other than that, I really have very little to talk about. Let's just hope his wine aged better than his band has.
Elephant Shell came out in the UK on May 5th, and Tokyo Police Club are currently on tour in a city near 'yous guys'.