Elephant Shell (2008)

This quartet turned heads with their first EP — 16 minutes of post-punk electricity. Now Tokyo Police Club are back two years later with the full-length Elephant Shell, which, true to form, clocks in at just under half an hour. The band uses that small bit of added breathing room to veer off in some unfortunate directions, from the mewling sad-sackisms of ''Centennial'' to the flat orchestration of ''The Harrowing Adventures of...'' When they do hit their stride, it's on several urgent guitar-and-synth anthems, which makes you wonder why these guys didn't just weed out the riffraff and release another killer EP. B
DOWNLOAD THIS: Listen to ''In a Cave'' on spinner.com