The leap from Hype to Hope can be tricky. Tokyo Police Club stumbled a bit with 2008's Elephant Shell, their debut full-length. It arrived just months after the band played the Muppet Babies version of the Strokes on their affecting EP, A Lesson In Crime. But they've regained their footing on Champ. Less complex, and therefore better, the band has returned to the plainspoken, tensile indie pop style that best suits them. Dave Monks, still a wheedling and forcefully nerdy vocalist, sings to a man on his deathbed on "Favourite Food," recalling what sounds like the crippling atrophy of the human body, and then remembrances of a love gone past. It's an unfussy sentiment draped in vivid detail ("Your knees are scratched and your eyes are black") and splashes of abstraction — exactly the sort of thing this band excels at.

On "Breakneck Speed," Monks chimes, "I'm still amazed you made it out alive after what you did." We never learn what it is the subject did, but somehow we don't need to know. The rest of the band complies with a nervous, driving sound. "Wait Up (Boots of Danger)" sounds as if it may burst at its… read more »