By: Karen K. Tran
Who: Tokyo Police Club
Where: History, 1663 Queen St. E.
When: Tue., Nov. 26; Wed., Nov. 27 w/ Hollerado; Thurs., Nov. 28 w/ Good Kid; Fri., Nov. 29; Sat., Nov. 30 w/ Born Ruffians
TOKYO POLICE CLUB are topping it all off with a bow and officially calling it quits at the end of this year. After almost two decades together, the beloved Newmarket, Ont.-born indie band are preserving the romance of Tokyo Police Club (TPC) with a final farewell tour. Known for their pop-friendly indie rock sound and somewhat nonsensical lyrics, millennials and gen Zs will likely recognize their hits, Bambi, Your English Is Good or Hot Tonight, which are Canadian indie rock station favourites.
Canada might claim TPC as its own, but a mighty and dedicated fan base from all over the world has embraced their music. Fans in the comment section of their farewell announcement reminisced about their first concerts, the way they connected with loved ones over the music and offered well wishes for what’s next to come for the band members.
Songwriter/bassist Dave Monks and keyboardist/guitarist Graham Wright meet me at the back patio of Round the Horn in Roncesvalles for an afternoon beer/coffee. Though they had just played a show together at a festival a few days earlier, the two mention that they still had some catching up to do with each other. Touring isn’t the same as it used to be when you would be stuck in a van for hours on end when all you have to do to amuse yourself is talk to your bandmates. Life gets in the way now, and the band members all have their own families and other projects to deal with.
“It has been three years since we did a proper tour, but that whole time, we were actively either considering new music or doing summer shows,” says Wright. “It always felt to me at least the band was going — although the band was kind of going slowly for a while. It was still fully in movement.”
“We knew we were gonna do something and we were feeling around to see, ‘Are we making new music? Are we doing an anniversary tour?’” adds Monks. “There’s all these ideas we were floating and we decided, ‘We’re saying goodbye.’ Graham said it before that it’s not that we’re ending. It’s that we’re not not starting now.”
When it came to TPC, Monks, Wright, Josh Hook (guitar) and Greg Alsop (drums) agreed that it was time to take the band out for one last ride. Before their last record came out in 2018, the band had a big discussion on their future about whether they were ending it or if some of the bandmates would be leaving. Back then, Monks convinced the rest of his bandmates that it was worth it to keep going because he had a vision for a new record — which became the self-titled album, TPC.
It was really rewarding for the band to put out TPC and tour some more, but this time, when the conversation on the future came back around, the band was in total agreement that the end was in sight. Though, it was not as if the band had been working towards a grand finale for a while. TPC had still been writing new music and planning shows until they made the decision.
Take, for example, their double single release — Just A Scratch and Catch Me If You Can, which was released in March 2024 at the same time as their announcement for The Final Tour — these songs capture where the band is today. They’re not old songs that the band dug out to release as bonus tracks to promote a tour, and they’re not songs that the band wrote with the intention of saying goodbye. They’re songs that are genuinely part of their current movement.
“I think they would have been so different if we had written them on purpose to be the last songs,” says Wright. “There would have been some sense of ‘Should we make them sound like the old songs?’ You’re so self-aware all of a sudden, and these ones were — as all of our songs are — explorations of art.”
For almost 20 years, TPC have been sharing their explorations of art with the world. There are seven records in the story of TPC, and though this is the last chapter for this group of adventurers, it’s inevitable that they will reunite. For Wright, he’s currently playing in an Oasis cover band called Parklife as well as Girlfriend Material with Josh Hook (TPC), Jake Boyd (Hollerado) and Joseph Garand. On the other hand, Monks plays in Anyway Gang with Sam Roberts (Sam Roberts Band), Chris Murphy (Sloan) and Menno Versteeg (Hollerado).
Of course, the Tokyo Police Club members plan to stay in touch as friends and consult each other as musical colleagues, but saying goodbye to the band means that their relationships will change.
“It’s like you’re kind of moving with this sense of momentum with the band, and if you lose steam, they pick you up and you keep going,” says Monks. “There’s a whole structure to being in a band — it’s exciting to have a blank slate, but now you’re like, it’s just me in the world. There’s no limits. It’s a very unromantic thing to say, but I think that’s what’s going to hit me first about saying goodbye.”
Originally planned as a single farewell show in Toronto, The Final Tour came to fruition at the protest of many of their fans all over the world who wanted the chance to see them play one last time. The tour evolved into a months-long trek across the U.S. and Canada, ending with four shows at History in Toronto and even spurring their fellow Canadian indie band of the era, Hollerado, to reunite and open for two of the Toronto shows, despite calling it quits back in 2019.
Monks and Wright promise that Tokyo Police Club’s decision to end is final, though they joke that they’re not opposed to reuniting in a few years to open the show if their friends in Hollerado wanted to get back together. In all seriousness, Monks and Wright have no idea what they’re doing after the tour ends.
And even though TPC as a band is ending, my impression is that it will never really be farewell. There are always new projects and new musical romances that will tie Tokyo Police Club together in some way.
“There’s still a lot of music out there to make,” says Monks. “We don’t have to make this about the future. What we share is this moment.”
