Tokyo Police Club keyboardist Graham Wright has seen a lot in his band’s decade-long career, including Victoria’s Rifflandia festival. The band played the fest last year and although they’re missing it this time around they’re still excited to be coming back to the island.
“Yeah, Rifflandia, we did that last summer and it was amazing,” says Wright. “We’re big Victoria fans, big island fans; I like the ferry. You gotta wake up real early for it, but otherwise I like it. We do Victoria every time we’re out west, and we always have a blast.”
The band is touring in support of their new EP, Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness: Part 2 (the Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness: Part 1 EP came out in April). The cover art of both EPs is a photo of a smashed watermelon, which, combined with the EPs’ titles, alludes to a certain ’90s alternative band.
“We grew up in the ’90s, so we’re Smashing Pumpkins fans,” says Wright. “However, we are also smashing watermelon fans, which is the origin of this whole thing. Dave [Monks, bassist/vocalist] met with a friend of his who is a photographer, and I guess they got the bright idea that they should smash a watermelon and take a picture of it. That turned out great and it became the cover for the first part of the EP. We were just sitting around brainstorming what to call it, and someone just cracked wise and said ‘melon collie’ and someone else said ‘and the infinite radness,’ and we said, ‘Yup, let’s do that. Done.’ And we never talked about it again.”
One of the standout songs on the first EP was “Not My Girl,” an upbeat and easy-to-relate-to song about love, dating, and breaking up.
“I think that’s why I love songs that are so perennial—because everyone’s gone through some version of it,” says Wright. “It’s your nostalgic rock and roll love song, you know, ‘This is how it was and this is how it was when it was good and this is how it is now, and perhaps that’s not so good.’”
Growing up together in Newmarket, Ontario, Tokyo Police Club is a quartet of extremely close childhood friends. They’ve stuck it out together in the music industry while, as they recently learned, many others haven’t.
“We’ve known each other since we were, like, 10,” says Wright. “We never learned how to play instruments first, we were just like, ‘Let’s form a band, that’ll be fun.’ And we sort of learned how to play instruments in the context of writing songs. We’re getting these tour dates ready and getting some hometown stuff ready as a 10th anniversary celebration. Our agent was like, ‘What bands were you guys playing with in the beginning? We should call them up and get them to come play with you guys again.’ And we went down this long list of all the bands that were playing with us in 2006 and none of them exist anymore; some of them were really good.”
Something else that’s changed over the past 10 years is the impact of the internet on the music industry. Wright’s opinion on whether it’s been a good or bad thing has swayed back and forth over time.
“I’ve held both opinions very strongly at one time or another,” he says. “It’s just changed the game so completely. I think it’s enabled a lot more bands to make a living; there’s been a rise of blue-collar rock bands. You can go, you can get in a band, you can put out records and tour, and you can make a living off it. But you’re not getting rich, and you can’t really stop or retire, and that didn’t used to exist—you could make a bunch of money or you could make no money was the dichotomy, originally.”
Tokyo Police Club
(with Born Ruffians)
Tuesday, October 4
$28, Alix Goolden Hall
vcm.bc.ca/alix-goolden-hall