Tokyo Police Club

Maybe one day they’ll make a romcom about Tokyo Police Club. Amanda Seyfried will play a blogger living in postgraduate Bohemiaville, having a star-crossed fling with one of the boys in the band against a quirky milieu of wireless java huts, slacker roommates and the shlubby but good-hearted dude at the vinyl shack who really loves her, if only she would notice. Call it Must Love Synths. Spin TPC’s new Champ as the soundtrack. The Ontario quartet is shameless enough in its affectations and affections for ’90s-inflected cutesy nerd pop that it’ll take our scenario as a compliment, which it actually is.

The cheerful factor can get a tad wearing, but it’s hard to argue with tight, three-minute arrangements and literate story-songs like “Favourite Color” or “Bambi,” in which spangly, overlaid guitar patterns are un-self-consciously distorted to sound like West African thumb piano. As frontman David Monks says in “Big Difference”: “Less big words and more exclamation marks”—notably, right before a rush of guitars chimes in, over muscular drums and a bass full of optimism.

But these guys aren’t Weezer clones. They’re inventive, leading wordy songs around unexpected curves. With luck, they’ll lay off the hyper boom-boom-bap for more laid-back numbers like “Hands Reversed,” the best thing on Champ. Monks adopts a more plaintive stance buoyed by swaying rhythms and calls a girl “made of paper and glue” a Rubik’s Cube. Amanda would fall for it, and that record-store dude would be out of luck.

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