Edgefest

For a band that burst on the scene with an ecstatically received 16 minutes of music (2006's A Lesson In Crime EP) followed in rapid fire succession by additional EPs and singles (Smith, “Your English Is Good”) and a debut album (2008’s Elephant Shell) all in under two years time, you’d think 26 months between albums would be an interminable wait. And it might well have been for Tokyo Police Club, had they not toured relentlessly in support of that first album through August of 2009 — and started writing new songs virtually the second their previous record was put to bed. “There’s really not one thing to sum it up,” says David Monks of the record. “Musically we didn’t follow any kind of framework or preferred kind of song. Any direction we went is a direction that just felt fun.

“Or you could say,” he concludes, “It just sounds like us.”