A Reasonably Sized Post About Tokyo Police Club

Looking from the insanely huge Beanstalk that they’ve spent so much sweat crawling up.  They sit on their home-made thrones, made with their bare hands and guitars. (Of course, this is just a picture in my human head; I’m not suggesting it should be in everyone’s)

I’m just one of the millions of people who really, really like Tokyo Police Club.

Partly why I appear to be on the brink of slamming the floor with admiration and liveliness is due to the fact TPC announced at some point in the last month (maybe even “just”!) that they’re gonna be releasing a 2nd album. It’s called Champ. Of course, a little enzyme that acted as a little catalyst to my excitement was a few “teasers” that they sort of ‘released’ to the masses (again, at some point in the last month). They’re called ‘Breakneck Speed’ and ‘Wait Up (Boots of Danger)’.

If you hadn’t already heard these songs, please go free and make your own mind up (listen below).

I personally found these songs instantly and entirely infectious. It possesses a little bit of their original spikey freedom that Monks screamed across in their ‘A Lesson in Crime’ but also holds a tasty smell of what made some of Elephant Shell‘s such utter anthems. A little bit more of what they were before however. He’s dropped the Gibbard-language as well (I’m not going to lie, I found it so hard not to agree with Pitchfork’s well articulated criticism of it all on ‘Elephant Shell’) and they seem to have lost the pressure that was pressed down upon their innocent heads (after they smacked the world in the face with an EP that was gobbled upon with perfectly justified over-excitement).

But look! Let’s not read too much into these two lone songs! It’s still possible that this second album could turn out to be worthy of one of The Killers thousand sequel non- albums that followed Hot Fuss.

Unlikely though.

Champ Snippets

Tokyo Police Club – Breakneck Speed

Tokyo Police Club – Wait Up (Boots of Danger)

If we proceed to make this beanstalk indie-related, then we’re left with an even bigger beanstalk that could inhabit hundreds of giants, but let’s take look a bit lower towards the ground, where the wannabes have only just germinated. OH GOD I HAVE FAIRY-TALE LANGUAGE IMPLANTED IN MY BRAIN.

I say germinated, Bombay Bicycle Club just won a huge NME award, they’re hundred times higher than Tokyo Police Club in our humble english land and they’ve transformed themselves into superstars quicker than a series of X Factor. But only so few have ever enjoyed a crazily good video on one the of best music youtube channels on the whole entire world wide web. (That’s the video below)

Bombay Bicycle Club – Dust On The Ground

Lion Club also decided to base their band name on the word ‘club’. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt though because this song is wild.

Lion Club – Middle of the Night

thanks,

George

Kona Triangle, Viking Moses & Australian Idol

I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned Kona Triangle before, ok basically, listen until 2 minutes 10 seconds of Mango Rubicon, and tell me you don’t have the urge to ostentatiously shout some sort of meaningless syllable (eg. Woah, Gargh etc.).

It’s the way it makes you endure the best part of 2 minutes of obscure (yet essential) steel drums/bird song, and then introduces one elephant of a big beat. Hard not to find appealing in my book. I lie, I have technically mentioned these guys before, see, it’s a collaboration of Lone and Keaver & Brause, both of whom I referenced in the Gran Turismo article. They are the real kings of ambient/glitch/IDM/Beats which unfortunately is a rather small spectrum. Other gems from Kona Triangle’s impressive album “Sing a New Sapling into Existence” include ‘Flesh Flowers Ahead’ and ‘Airlock’, but the whole album you can easily get off itunes (that is beside the usual immoral methods).

Yay, as if I was going to forget my usual dosage of some form of pleasant folk:

Something to think about, whether it be necessary or not, is the value of these songs. For example, I find this specimen by Viking Moses relatively invaluable, simply because he generally sounds quite similar to thousands of other artists, I might also say the same for someone like Lisa Mitchell in terms of lacking value, purely because she’s been put together by some businessmen who happened to watch the 2006 season of Australian Idol. For some people, the value of a song is extremely important, and some people might even say that a song’s value becomes much less if it becomes worldwide famous, so much so that they would skip the track or turn off the radio. For me, I would say value is slightly relevant, but not so much that I would skip a song because of it, the simple fact is, I like listening to songs that sound good; even if they have been manufactured by some large American or even sound an exact replica of someone else, I’m sure many other people would agree. Of course, this may be an unnecessary topic.

Whatever I was trying to say, I feel it’s a good enough excuse to upload Lisa Mitchell who has only just hit my social scene here in Germany.

simply because it sounds good.

On one final note, Pitchfork just reviewed Slow Club‘s Yeah so

thanks

George