Tokyo Police Club

0:00Hey, we're Tokyo Police Club, you're watching MSN Exclusives. Three songs in one, so how do the three songs come together? Part one, which is like, for a while, was just Argentina to us.

0:46Was sort of the first song that we had, we played it all the way through, like, wow, that's great. That's definitely one down on the record. It was sort of midway through writing all these Brazilian songs for Force Field. That was a real victory. I'm like, oh, we have that. The next day, I came in, I was like, yeah, I don't know. There's like weird little middle bit and it changes keys to see it clear. Hey, it's the same tempo as see it clear. And we put them all together and kind of like, we jammed it and then we recorded it. We recorded a demo of it right away. And yeah, it just felt good. It wasn't something that we set out to do, but it just felt, I mean, it happened really quickly. Like there was no conversation about it. It was never part of a master plan. Someone just said, we should do this. We were like, that's awesome. Let's do that. And it fortunately worked. Does it happen the other way around to where parts of songs will end up in other songs? Oh, yeah. Give me some. Yeah, cool. Give me some examples in this room.

1:32Miserable. Yeah. Miserable. Oh, yeah. Miserable. Miserable just came from all the different songs. No. First, miserable was its own song, but then miserable got a the course of miserable was a pre-course in another song. And every time the course will come in after you be like, yeah, I kind of like, I had it where the part where you said miserable. Like that's that's cooler. So then that became its own song. But then we lifted the bridge out of another thing. Miserable was one of those. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Someone was saying that this record is the most direct record you've made. And I hear it, but I also hear a lot of sonic variants at the same time. Well, definitely like lyrically I feel like it's more direct in that every song has a pretty clear like message it's trying to get across or like think it's talking about where is on champs. The lyrics are more of a hodgepodge of like zingers and catchy lines and stuff.

2:21So, yeah. Musically, I think that the key to this one, what we really, I think what we really got onto that worked really well for us was the songs do have a look. It's more layered than any of our records. There's more little bits, pieces here and there than anything else we've done. But every song we knew exactly what the song was about, what the song was supposed to be doing. So then even when you were adding a tiny little keyboard shine here or a tricky little extra percussion thing here, it was always in service. You knew what it was in service of. As opposed to I think in the past when sometimes you didn't have as clear an idea of what the song was about. So you'd add these different parts, but they wouldn't necessarily be serving the exact same end. And that at the end of the day, I'm like, Muddy's the water is worse this time. I feel like we were hitting everything was supporting the song. And so you can have a hundred keyboard parts if they're all, if they are all part of the plan.

3:10Not the way I'm trying to have a hundred keyboard parts yet. Yes, still working on some remixes and stuff. When you remix some hip hop song on Twitter? Oh, I did. Yeah. Yeah, some guys from New York sent me some vocals I had. So yeah, it's fine. It's cool to take just somebody's vocals and write a new song around it. It's a cool top down kind of way of creating music. Beach's goes back to like three years. So what took the longest to create on this record? It was always one part we were going to change in tunnel vision. Man, honestly, all of it. It all took everything got so dialed in on everything that it was like. You're looking at it this close and all of a sudden you have 10 things that you want to change.

3:55So I feel like that's what gives it. I feel like more than like how clean or like how how big the drum sound like I feel like it's the. The liberty of every part like everything is there for a reason and we and it is because we checked it in every other spot. We tried that Tambourine the other spots wasn't as good. It that's exactly where it goes. It's almost like a puzzle in that way. Like we have all these pieces and like it only goes together one way. Except I feel like champ was like a 3D puzzle of like the Joshy with tree and you're like what is this one? Was like a flat puzzle of Parliament Hill. Oh, it's a donkey. Yeah. Good. Good. Okay. Well, puzzle. I guess I'll do the word search.

4:40Next album. Yeah. Okay. Let's do the word search thing because we're talking about puzzles. Who's the word search king and the man? Who's the boss? You're kind of going to crosswords. Crosswords are okay. That word search though. I mean we didn't somebody else thought it up and I remember seeing it and just couldn't find anything. And you didn't know what the title is. That's okay. Did they change the track? Yeah. Everyone on Twitter was like the episode called poop now. Oh, now you have to. I don't know what the bonus is. I'll just wait for the end. All of you. You're talking about lyrics before. Toy guns. Is it a gun control statement or is it just happened to be a thing? No, it's not. It was just, I mean I was using it as a metaphor and you know just trying to relate through that metaphor. And at one point I almost wanted to bail on the shotgun thing but.

5:28Because it'd be too controversial or just. Yeah, I didn't want to. I just want to say but I just feel it's like yeah you know without spilling it out but. No spill it out. Oh just. Unless you don't want to. No, just like it's like you know everyone's got problems. Everyone's got like some issue and you think your world, all your problems are so important to you and like they're what drive you through life and through your decisions and then you look around and you're like oh everyone has the exact same stuff and that's kind of cool that way. It's like you're not so crazy. Like everyone's dealing with stuff too. Yeah every other kid on the block is jogging. I'm just one. But yeah so that's what it was. Now that this record is going to be, you guys have been playing some shows obviously. That's how the world is being in a band works. How does a set list change now that you have all these tunes. Because I'd love to hear this record front to back live.

6:14Probably not going to happen but how are you, how do you think you're going to mix them in? We started doing that in January. We did a short run of Ontario colleges in there and. It's hard because no one's heard the record yet or hadn't heard the record yet when we were doing it. So it felt like every time we had to do a new song we were like alright maybe we'll put two of them together. But we don't lose them so we got to give them something from like champer, the EP's in there. But people have been really responsive to it just right out of the gates which has been nice. Like it feels, I don't want to use the word direct again but it feels like people get it on first listen. And so people are excited to hear that song just as much as one of the songs from one of our older albums in there. So yeah you wouldn't hear it front to back but I mean hopefully they all just kind of compliment each other.

7:03Are there songs that, it's funny how when a band puts out a record some songs never end up in the set list. Just because it's harder to pull off live or whatever reason maybe they fall out of love with it or whatever. Would you like to try everything? Yeah this one we can pretty much do everything. Through the wires a little crazy that one's like a lot of stuff going on or something. It's got a certain thing but we're working on that one too. But yeah they all feel good. I like to read for Be Vocal at the beginning it's cool. Yeah yeah the party in the background acoustic thing yeah. I thought it was going to be a Kanye cover when I saw the title I was like oh another cover. And then Chip on Poison. The whole vision is like a Justin Timberlake song. We had songs first. We do something called Five Questions. Five good questions. One more answer is everyone can do it. Road or studio?

7:48Studio. Yeah studio. Just not. No the first thing that popped in the head was road. Okay. Road. Leonard or McCartney? Oh. Oh. McCartney. Oh. Leonard. When you hear a song what usually hits you first lyrics melody or rhythm. Rhythm. Melody. If someone's never heard Tokyo Police Club before what song do you start with? Argentina. Argentina. Argentina. Yeah unanimous. It's cheating it's three songs. That's fair. In one word Tokyo Police Club. To be cool. Who? McCartney. That's a first. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

8:34I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's a first. That's clever. Yeah. It's still your turn. Us. Are these standard questions you're giving up? These are specifically catered for us? No. Everyone's been there for a few years. I did an Eric interview. No. No. It's just the five questions. I have.