Tokyo Police Club singer-bassist David Monks admits that creating the Ontario quartet's 2008 full-length debut, Elephant Shell, was a trying experience. The band had toured itself into a corner and had to force the album out in a matter of weeks. The record was eventually hailed as an artistic step up from the group's two EPs, but not before money was wasted and heaps of material scrapped. When it came time for 2010's more polished postpunk celebration, Champ, the assembly of early-20-somethings had learned from its mistakes.

Reached in Toronto and sounding more than a little groggy after being woken up by the Straight, Monks explains that once they were recording an Elephant Shell follow-up, it felt like the band was on the right track.

“Champ always seemed like it was going somewhere cool,” he says.

And somewhere cool it went. On “End of a Spark”, Monks's lyrics let you dance to the dreams of your childhood, eliciting wonderfully fuzzy scenes lifted from the pages of Where the Wild Things Are. “Under our bed, a monster lives/We fight his teeth with superglue and paper clips,” he sings. “We should always pretend/Well, you just start and I'll say when.” The nostalgic tracks “Favourite Food” and “Favourite Colour” also take you back to innocent days spent in the schoolyard.

“When that stuff comes out, it is a little subconscious,” Monks says, going on to note that the record's playful themes likely owe something to his father. “My dad, he's got so many stories from his childhood that are so largely embellished,” he explains. “And I think maybe some of that is passed on to me.”

With its many reflective songs giving the impression that this crew is wise beyond its years, Champ is, lyrically, no great departure from Tokyo Police Club's earlier work (not that this is a bad thing). However, musically, the latest effort sees the band take another step away from 2006's rougher postrawk banger, the EP A Lesson in Crime. “Wait Up (Boots of Danger)” rides fast on galloping, straight-out-of-Williamsburg tempos. Likewise, Graham Wright's flashy keyboard work driving “Bambi” is practically guaranteed to detonate dance floors.

Just as much fun are Josh Hook's effervescent guitar licks on “Big Difference” and the boisterous “Not Sick”, which puts Greg Alsop's first-rate drumming on display. It's a more radio-friendly release from the group Rolling Stone has described as “poised to become the biggest Canadian export since Molson”.

The 23-year-old Monks acknowledges the album's lighter vibe. “I think we were just having more fun, and so it came across that way,” he says. Which gets back to how Champ came to be.

While several of the record's songs deliver loose stories of kids coming of age, Monks maintains that this wasn't necessarily the plan from the start. “The only concept that we made was to have fun doing it,” he emphasizes.

Bits and pieces of as many as 20 songs were drafted over the course of a year and a half, Monks recalls. Then the boys settled down in Los Angeles to put it all together.

“You have ideas in your head about how you want your record to sound,” he explains. But the band has learned that an album's direction can change so much that it's easier to let things flow. “Then just trust that the record is going to take on a personality as a result of that.”

Tokyo Police Club plays LIVE at Squamish on Sunday (September 5).

You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.