A shiny, crumpled sheet of aluminum foil is the album cover of Feel Forever, the Sept. 18 release from the British dream/psych/bedroom pop band Tokyo Tea Room. It captures the light like a budget disco ball.
“For some reason, that picture struck me,” says Daniel James Elliott, the band’s vocalist, synthesist and guitarist. “It gives that idea of seeing the detail in the mundane, and I think that’s what this album reflects.”
But, if we can stretch this metaphor a little further, the eye-catching impermanence of the cover art can also apply to the current age of music, in which the success (or lack thereof) of new releases can be closely linked to social media appeal.
“It’s not easy at all, is it?” Elliott says. “People’s attention span is shortened these days. You have to invent new ways to capture an audience in the first three seconds of a video. Me and Beth and the rest of the band, that’s not really our thing. We grew up a little bit before that, and we’re just not that way inclined. I don’t feel like that’s fun. I like the mystery a bit more, so we struggle with that element, to be honest, but I fully understand that it’s part and parcel of the music industry these days.”
Still, Elliott and the album’s co-producer Kristofer Harris have embraced technology to a degree to cement the band’s dreamy sound. Feel Forever is clearly a product of the 2020s and benefits from an enormous variety of audio processing tools, including modern equalization and saturators.
When possible, the band goes vintage. Tokyo Tea Room’s favored digital synthesizers were released just one year apart, with the Yamaha DX7 coming out in 1983 and the JUNO-106 in 1984. The Neve 1073 was first introduced in London in 1970, and Elliott describes himself as “obsessed” with the microphone preamp.
“I don’t do things completely analog because it’s crazy expensive, and it’s crazy difficult to not be able to edit your mistakes,” he explains. “But we do run stuff through tape, after we’ve recorded it digitally, and so it’s a real mix.”
Tokyo Tea Room is built on subtle contradictions like these, going all the way back to the inspiration for its name.
As Elliott said in a 2025 interview with C-Heads, “The name is supposed to inspire a feeling of escape – like stepping out of the noise to have a moment of calm. The contrast in the name reflects the duality in our sound – Tokyo suggests fast paced, vibrant energy, while tea room reflects calmness and serenity. It’s my way of romanticising escapism.”
And Elliott’s favorite way to escape is with a long, quiet, tech-free walk.
“The last thing I want to do is introduce social media or technology into that sacred space and start capturing things that are supposed to be just in the moment for me. That’s what I have to learn to do now, is to expose that side of things to everybody on social media,” Elliott says.
The band’s vocalist and keyboardist Beth Dunn finds her sense of escapism in the creation of music.
“One of my favorite things is to be in the studio and recording, like when me and Dan come together for demos and learn new melodies,” Dunn says. “Obviously, it’s quite a certain tone, and we try to keep that through every song at the same level, the same kind of breathiness as much as possible. I do have to kind of get into a zone to be able to do that because it’s natural in a sense, but to emphasize that [tone] takes a bit of concentration.”
If Elliott had to choose one song off the album to hook listeners, it would be the first single, “Eyes Off You.” It’s a classic first-person perspective of a sudden infatuation. It bridges the gap between the band’s first and second album, accompanying the familiar introspection with a dancey melody.
Dunn would opt for “All Night,” which is lyrically similar in the sense of not being able to get enough of a lover.
“Show me where to go, so I can walk in your light,” Dunn croons. “Feeling kinda low, I need your love to revive.”
Elliott describes the central theme as “all of those weird, intense things that you wouldn’t necessarily want to admit you feel, but everybody does.”
“It’s interesting to hear those sides of people, the things that you wouldn’t necessarily want to share in a typical conversation about how a relationship is going or how you’re feeling about losing someone that you’re close to. I don’t know whether that’s actually just a British thing, because it’s that stiff upper lip thing, isn’t it?”
Tokyo Tea Room will be taking some of their quintessentially British qualities on tour across North America from Sept. 24 to Oct. 19, followed by multiple dates in Germany.
“From the point of view of where I think is tried and tested, I’m excited to go back to LA and New York,” Elliott says. “But on a personal level, I’m excited to explore the country more and to see Texas. I feel like the ticket sales in the south have been really good. I didn’t know that we had such a good fan base down there, so I’m looking forward to seeing those guys.”
Tokyo Tea Room is composed of Elliott, Dunn, Ben Marshall on bass guitar, Sam Teather on drums and Sam Ewens on bass.
Photos: Tamibé Bourdanné