Elephant Shell - Tokyo Police Club Album Review

Tokyo Police Club

Album Review

The first thing I'll say is that it's a slowburner. Only after a month in my possession have I been able to form any feelings for the promo, but now it's finally clicked, it's not one I want to lose anytime soon. And fortunately for you, at under half an hour long, you'll have plenty of time with which to get to grips with it. As the album is delivered in a sort of instrumental monotone, it's been quite hard to grab onto any particular standout tracks for grounding at first – but the whole thing comes together into rather a nice wholeness, though at the expense of diversity.

If you find The Strokes dull, you could spend years listening to this record and get nothing (and as already pointed out, you could listen to this twice as much over than period than your standard LP!), but for those who believe musical history starts and ends with 'Is This It?" this is a nice development. The delivery is half-spoken, half sang like Mr Casablanca, and the fuzzy guitar is straight out of 2001. This is all hung together with a tight drum beat which delivers the whole album at a pace that barely gives you time to get a feel of it. The whole sense of urgency is echoed by the closing lyrics of the first track 'Centennial': "I'm running out of space, so let me sum this up for you" - and sum it up he does, in 28 minutes or less or your money back*.

While The Strokes made a successful opening album by stripping down music to 'just the best bits', thus getting away with a sameyness that would see other bands castrated by the media, 'Elephant Shell' is missing out on this accolade because it somehow manages to include some filler despite its svelte figure. In particular 'shout-along' anthem 'Your English is Good' manages to misjudge quality control by being one of the longest songs on the album at over 3 minutes, despite adding nothing except a mildly irritating chorus-hook to proceedings. Likewise 'The Harrowing Adventures Of...' seeks to slow down proceedings by presenting a quiet and sweet number, but only succeeds in standing out like a sore and musically dull thumb.

It's peculiar that I highlight the two tracks where the band try to be more diverse as let downs, after previously stating that the album's main problem is a lack of diversity, but I neglected to mention that it was also one of it's strengths. When Tokyo Police Club are on form, as they frequently are in songs like 'Tesselate', 'Centennial', and 'Listen to the Math', they're excellent, and make you long for more. If it's a choice between diversity and quality, then following The Strokes' model is a better choice for this band, but as this is their first attempt, you can't help but look past the few slip ups in the tracklisting and reward them with the praise such a strong debut album deserves.

* will not be honoured in case you have a freaky special edition.

Alan Martin