Tokyo Police Club’s debut full-length, Elephant Shell, sits in that purgatory between full of potential and full of crap. I call this zone a purgatory because it is quite possibly the most difficult place to be as a new artist. Unlike being written off as simply shitty, it’s a station that’s sure to garner mixed reviews and bombastic claims in either direction. Unlike being adored, no comparable ego massage comes from being OK. What are you left to do? Twiddle your thumbs?
Let me follow this rather bitchy opening with a disclaimer: Elephant Shell is not a bad album. Their sound is mobile, energetic—guitars bounce eagerly, like superballs, jostling around with speedy drum lines, occasional shouts, bright keyboards. When they’re on, such as in the ambitious “Sixties Remake” or racing “Graves,” the music is positively itching with eager fun, but the jubilation all too often comes off as hollow, put on, make-believe. Lead singer Dave Monks has a voice that squawks more than sings, adding a “quirkiness” to the music that is more aptly described as mildly irritating. The songs, so often orbiting around the same poppy post-punk territory, blur into one another uncomfortably. And here, my friends, is the album’s major flaw: that more than anything, it’s insecure and immature, the musical equivalent of puberty. This is not simply, or even primarily, because the band members themselves are so young. It is largely because they fail to convince the listener that they know who they are–that this identity they’ve tried on now is anything but the flavor of the month, one that will be traded as soon as it proves out of style or, worse, until they get bored.
Given how much this young band has been through in their already short career–blogosphere darlings, whirlwind multinational tours, getting signed to solid independent–Elephant Shell was destined not to simply exist as music, but instead to premiere as event. It’s expected that with so much scrutiny and pressure and expectation, TPC would be undergoing something akin to an identity crisis. But it makes Elephant Shell sound like a mask. I’m still waiting to hear what they really sound like.
