The shuffler: David Monks, the bassist
and boyish voice of Ontario band Tokyo Police Club. The band didn't get much
time to develop before it attracted a heap of attention on the strength of a
couple of EPs, but its youth and sloppy smear of pop styles are also its
advantages. Indie label Saddle Creek recently released TPC's first full-length, Elephant Shell.
Radiohead, "I Am A Wicked Child"
David Monks: This is something, certainly, that [TPC
keyboardist Graham Wright] put on my iPod. Not only a wicked child, a wicked
song, can I say? [Laughs.] I've kinda gradually been going through all the live
Radiohead bootleg stuff that Graham has bestowed upon me, just to get to hear
the songs in such a different way. I have a live version of "Fog" on my iPod
that is amazing.
The A.V. Club: Their songs mutate a lot, live.
DM: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes, you'll think it's about
to be the same, and then it's just way better. We saw them and they started
with "The Gloaming," which is kind of like the sleeper of Hail To The Thief, but halfway through,
Colin [Greenwood] started playing this bassline that was not on the record, but
definitely should have been. I remember that being a great start to my first
time seeing Radiohead.
Cold War Kids, "Robbers"
DM: We toured with Cold War Kids for about a month,
and the result of that is twofold. I know all their songs inside and out, because
I've heard them played about 30 times, but I don't know the names of any of the
songs. Hang on, let me listen. Oh, yeah. It's the slow one: "Na na na na na na…
it ain't easy." The whole time, it's got this pitter-patter drumbeat. The first
thing that struck me about seeing them live is, they definitely get those
moments in the songs where it's really great, yet they're never rocking, and
their drummer always does interesting, oddball stuff. He never lands on a
two-and-a-four beat.
Bright Eyes, "Hit The Switch"
DM: From Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, which is fitting because
we're now on Saddle Creek. I don't know this song in particular. I'm more of an I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning fan. He's one of those artists where sometimes
the lyrics are really good, and that's the most memorable part of the song. In
a really good way.
Bloc Party, "So Here We Are"
DM: Wow, it's a pretty straight-up playlist that's
come up so far. That first Bloc Party record, I was in Montreal going to school
there, and I got home for Thanksgiving, and my sister said, "Oh man, Dave,
there's this new band called Bloc Party, and you gotta hear them." And she gave
me the CD and I got really into it. I remember playing it in my dorm a lot.
That was kind of a crossroads for us, in that we had just been a band playing
in [TCP guitarist Josh Hook]'s basement, and I was at school, and that was when
we decided to all come home and do this for real, and drop out of school and be
cool dudes. It resonates with the irrational side of me in a really good way.
It makes me feel like a teenager. It feels like a record that I should have
discovered in high school. I guess I was only 19 when I did discover it.
The Libertines, "Death On The Stairs"
DM: This is from Up The Bracket, which is definitely in
my top five records ever.
AVC: Why's that?
DM: The lyrics, and the feeling of that record. I
wanna figure out which lyric it is. I saw them twice in Toronto. I was
definitely 16 or 17, and both times I saw them, they had a stand-in for Pete
[Doherty], the same guy. [Laughs.] Some guy is putting his kids through college
on being Pete Doherty at shows. They were awesome shows, they were definitely
great. I did an interview today with someone from Japan, and they'd seen us
play in Tokyo, and they said that we reminded them of The Libertines, and that
was definitely a great compliment.
Spoon, "Stay Don't Go"
DM: Definitely the best song off Kill The
Moonlight.
At least probably, if not definitely. When the band first started, in the first
three weeks of the first month of our band, it was [drummer Greg Alsop], Josh,
and me. We decided we wanted a keyboard player, and the logical thing was to
get Graham because we'd played in bands with him before, and he didn't suck that much at piano. So we went
to our school music department and checked all their keyboards for what we
could rent or borrow for a prolonged period of time, and we got this old Yamaha
keyboard that only had two settings: piano" and "harpsichord," which was just a
bad-sounding "piano." But it sounded exactly like the keyboard in "Stay Don't
Go," which is, like, the most minimally placed keyboard. That's why we thought
it was so awesome: "Oh, my God, it's the keyboard from that Spoon song!"
Another great thing about that keyboard was, you could hit a note and the
sustain on it would ring for so long. It would fade and sound great,† but it would be ringing so quietly, and
you'd turn the amp off and come down after having dinner or whatever, and it
would still be ringing a bit. Graham plays this one specific Casio keyboard now
live—he's on an eBay/Craigslist quest to stock up on them, so when it
eventually does break down, he'll have a backup.
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead,
"Days Of Being Wild"
DM: From Source Tags & Codes, which is a good record.
It got a 10 on Pitchfork. I think I was, like, 17, and I got this record because Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot
and Neutral Milk Hotel and Kid A and OK Computer all got 10s on Pitchfork, and they were all
life-changing records, and then I was like, "Why would I not buy this record?"
It's certainly a good record, but I don't know if it's a 10.