Way back in the halcyon days of the aughts (when we were looking back at the halcyon days of the nineties), four kids named Tokyo Police Club released A Lesson In Crime – and the rest was history. Part of a new generation of aughts indie-rock acts alongside the likes of Ra Ra Riot and Vampire Weekend (who both opened for Tokyo at Maxwell’s in Hoboken in 2007 – QRO live review), they channeled the fun of being in a band with your best friends, while also delivering much more mature emotion, through albums such as Crime, 2008’s Elephant Shell (QRO review), 2010’s Champ (QRO review), 2014’s Forcefield (QRO review), 2018’s TPC (QRO review) and more. But this year drummer Greg Alsop, guitarist Josh Hook, singer Dave Monks, and keyboardist/guitarist Graham Wright announced that it would be the last year for TPC, a final tour ending in the end of November with multiple nights in their hometown of Toronto. Just before that they played their final American dates, their last show ever in the States at New York’s Irving Plaza (QRO venue review) on Wednesday, November 20th.

Somehow, the band managed to find time to both cover both their whole discography (though your correspondent would have liked a cover from 2011’s covers album Ten Songs, Ten Years, Ten Days – QRO review), and give some amazing speeches. It helps to be a hyper-indie band with songs short enough to fit in 27 over the night. They kicked off with four from Champ, then four from Elephant Shell, then three from TPC, then mixing & matching from all over, including Forcefield, Lesson, and even “Hang Your Heart” off of the second of their Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness EPs (QRO review). Yes, there were the old hits that they broke out with, such as Lesson’s “Nature of the Experiment” (where the name “Tokyo Police Club” is referenced) & “Citizens of Tomorrow” (which warned of the robot-dominated future of 2010) and Champ’s “Bambi”, even your Champ back-to-back favourites “Favourite Food” & “Favourite Colour” to start the night (including the extra ‘u’ from His Majesty’s empire), through getting the crowd to sing-along to the “elephant shell” portion of that album’s “Centennial”, “not one, not two, but three songs” that is Forcefield’s “Argentina (Parts I, II, III)”, handing one of their impressive hanging lights to the crowd during Forcefield’s “Frankenstein”, and a rocking TPC “Pigs” (where Hooks & Wright played to each other from their knees).

Early on, after Champ hit “Boots of Danger (Wait Up)”, Monks gave a speech about what the night meant to them, “The culmination of an incredible journey.” He noted that it started back in grade school (three of them met in Grade Four – Alsop came along in high school), playing pizza parties & writing EPs that sounded like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to playing Coachella and Letterman – and most importantly, within a few months of Lesson, personally meeting four members of The Strokes.

We were nineteen, this whole experience was mind-blowing for us. We went on to go and put out albums, and make the music that was in our hearts for nearly two decades. We made the music that we wanted to make. We had an audience that followed through every release, listened to every album – and not every band gets to do that; we’re so lucky that get to do that. We’re so lucky that we’re here on stage not just because we’re playing out first album top-to-bottom – we’re playing all this music. We get to share the whole journey with all of you. That means so much – we know that’s a rare thing. Thank you!

Wright later told of a “stack of memories” from NYC: pacing around in Madison Square Garden in 2008 on the phone with his high school girlfriend before opening for Weezer (QRO photos); having an iPad with a person on it rolling across the stage at Irving Plaza (he said 2014, but it was actually 2016 – QRO photos); David Letterman introducing them as “Toyota Police Club” in 2006; a music industry suit explaining why good bands suck live in 2012 (“And it sounds compelling…”); explaining in 2008 to Stroke Albert Hammond Jr. about why it’s better to put keyboards through an amp (“And he’s listening politely…”); it’s 2024 and Tokyo Police Club is playing their last show on American soil forever.

Monks would also give a particularly sweet speech praising Alsop, noting how the band doesn’t have much drum solos, and specifically how Alsop came up with the drum part on the fly, in the expensive studio for “Hands Reversed” – “I just want to shout-out Greg back there, working his ass off!” For the encore, Monks came out solo for Shell’s “The Harrowing Adventures Of…”, and after that told the story behind TPC’s following “Ready To Win”, about playing NYC on his birthday, eating a cake on stage & getting drunk afterwards (Monks said it was his 30th at possibly Terminal 5, but he played T5 with cake on his 25th – QRO photos – and played Music Hall of Williamsburg on his 30th – QRO live review), writing about all the times he’s “fucked up” while hungover and riding shotgun to the next show. They even had a moment where they not only waved goodbye to New York City, but got the crowd to wave goodbye to them.

An unfortunate, immutable fact of music is that bands break up – sort of the music-specific version of ‘death & taxes’. You may have followed a band since they started, may have ‘seen them when,’ but they’re older & you’re older, and all things come to an end. Such is the case with Tokyo Police Club, but they gave a hell of a goodbye.