Tokyo Police Club released their latest EP Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness (Part 1) on April 8 via Dine Alone Records. The Newmarket power pop quartet of David Monks, Graham Wright, Josh Hook and Greg Alsop are putting the finishing touches on Part 2, which is scheduled for release in the coming months. The band hits the stage on May 28 as part of a fantastic lineup of Canadian artists taking part in the CBC Music Festival at Echo Beach along with the likes of Hey Rosetta, the New Pornographers, Alvvays and many more.

Post City recently caught up with Graham Wright, who took the time to reflect on the band’s first decade in music and their humble beginnings.

The first gig: I remember it vividly, it was at the Cathedral and the Big Bop, which is now an expensive furniture store, which in and of itself might be an elegant metaphor. This was the early days of the internet, so you couldn’t go on Facebook or MySpace to get shows but we found our way through some message boards to some guy who promoted shows that weren’t quite pay to play, they weren’t scams, but they were very much a lineup of eight disparate bands together in a one night and call it a showcase and do it once or twice a month. When we started Tokyo, we said we gotta play a show, so we just emailed this gentleman and asked if we could play and he put us in a show at the Cathedral.

Something fishy: At this point, we had kind of went through that excitement of ooohhh it’s our first show with our high school band, so that idea of packing up the car and driving to the city and being the band, and getting to wear the wrist band or whatever was, if not old hat, at least not totally brand new to us. We just kinda went down and did it. We were not what I would describe as ready in any way, shape or form to perform in pubic. I remember being on stage setting up my keyboards, and I used to set them up in an L facing the band, and Dave came over and said don’t set them up like that, set them up like you’re open to the band so that we can rock together more. I was like ‘okay whatever,’ and that became my set-up for the rest of my career. Josh had a broken old trumpet that he didn’t know how to play that he played into a fishbowl with a microphone in it that went through some delay, and that was part of a song. I mean, it was shaggy, I guess that’s the best way to describe it.

Tiny miracles: We just kinda did that for a while. There wasn’t really even any hope for whatever we thought of as success in those days, it was more just something fun we could do. We knew people would be heading to university. I think we did five or six shows. We retired the fish bowl, but by and large it stayed that shaggy until on a whim we applied to Pop Montreal because Dave was going to school in Montreal and it was just a fun thing to do to toss the thing in the mail, which is a miracle because we never really followed through on anything. And we happened to be one of the few bands they happened to pick out of the sort of mountain of bands that were just booked in by their agents. And then Paperbag Records came out, and said maybe we’d put out an EP if you make one.

Let’s Get Serious: after that we were like okay, we have to get serious and there was one day in my basement where we’re like, half the songs we play are cut, we are never playing those again, we have to write new songs, write better songs. We have to get better and that sort of set the tone I think for what happened after and continues to happen where we went from being this average shaggy, following-the-muse indie rock group of kids to being real conscious of what we’re doing and real go-getters and real self-improvers.

From basement to buzz: Now, I’m beginning to realize the first three or four years, shit was bananas. We weren’t Vampire Weekend but we were a hyped band. People were into it, checking us out and curious and they liked what they heard more often than not it seemed. I mean, we played Coachella in 2007 as like children. I was 20 years old and we played in a packed tent for what must have been 6,000 people.

CBC Music Festival this weekend: It’s going to be a fun one. We’re just finishing a heavily booked and routed series of shows and that tends to have this Beatles in Hamburg effect where you get really good at playing shows on any stage under any circumstances at any level of exhaustion. Then we get to go home and rest and let muscle memory sink in and the first thing we do after we get home is play the CBC festival. Usually that first festival back, you explode like a dog that was cooped up in a car too long, you’re so ready to play again. So, I think we’re going to be at our peak.