Tokyo Police Club - Champ

We all love epic things, but by far the best ones are those that are epic in the most intimate sort of way. A sunset on a summer’s night. Running through freshly-fallen snow on a winter’s day. Things like this make you feel glad to be alive (and if they don’t, cheer up, you miserable bastard, because you don’t know what you’re missing).

The new album from the spirited Canadian quartet Tokyo Police Club is one such thing. It’s the sound of a band who have the absolute best time of their lives each time they step into the studio. It’s a gloriously fun listen, displaying a band who have moved on from the Strokes-y garage pop that constituted the majority of their EPs and album, to something far more unpredictable.

Yep. Unpredictable. While it must be admitted that their scope was relatively rather narrow before now (with parts of ‘Elephant Shell’ either blurring into each other or straying dangerously close to ‘saccharine’ territory), the group have broadened their horizons, with brilliant results.

In direct contrast to their 2008 debut, which came racing off the line with the punchy ‘Centennial’, ‘Champ”s beginnings are quite subdued. ‘Favourite Food’ sputters into life, guided along by an acoustic guitar (!) and frontman Dave Monks’ distinctive vocals. He’s matured into a fine singer, and his peculiar lyrical bent has remained. As the opener whirrs into life, the first of the many fine lines that define the sophomore album turns up: ‘Classic Hollywood as a kid, with the volume up all the way / Now you’d do the same, and you’re right, things are better in black and white’. The song swells, before racing to its finish, squealing guitars and syncopated drums bringing it to a close. In four minutes, the band manage to silence all their doubters and stun their fans. Touché.

Each song present on ‘Champ’ is refreshingly different from the others, packing a multitude of ideas into a whirlwind 36 minutes - that’s a whole nine longer than ‘Elephant Shell’, fact fans. ‘Breakneck Speed’ is one of the band’s most laid-back songs to date (despite its misleading title). Lead single ‘Wait Up (Boots of Danger)’ is as infectious a song as any they’ve written. ‘Champ’ is home to more hooks than you could shake a stick at, and the single is proof of this.

The highlights present on the record come one after the other; one of these is quite surprising, the fully acoustic ‘Hands Reversed’. A truly gorgeous song that finds the four-piece working well outside their comfort zone, it is followed in quick succession by one of the songs of the summer: a sun-kissed, swaggering anthem in the form of ‘Gone’, which sounds like a modern, Canadian take on The Beach Boys. This trio of standouts is completed by another head-turning mini-epic, ‘Big Difference’. Brilliant lyrics abound here: ‘The quiet kid is coming to stay / What does he say? / He says ‘I’m lonely … I’m hopeless / And that’s why I can’t send you Christmas cards / It’s why I have to keep you in the dark / Bless me, words and more exclamation marks!’

The sugar-rush pop of ‘Not Sick’ is the track most reminiscent of the debut’s material, an impassioned, euphoric song that has ‘hit single’ written all over it. After this, it’s left to the synth-led, mid-tempo ‘Frankenstein’ to close proceedings, which it does in style. There’s a lot of ground covered, and in such a short space of time. Those critics had better start eating their words, because if they were expecting this lot to just burn out, they were absolutely miles off.

Tokyo Police Club have found their voice, and left their own unique mark. No-one knows where they’ll go from here, and it’s hard to imagine the band themselves having the faintest idea either, because ‘Champ’ has opened up myriad possibilities, each one as exciting as the others.