Fun Stuff > BAND
The M/F Thread 2009: The Quickening
ragnarjon:
Interesting elctronica, breakbeat, drum n bas...
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onewheelwizzard:
Some awesome stoner/psychedelic rock for you guys.
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol. 1
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This is perfect for fans of Colour Haze and Kyuss, and you know who you are. If you don't already know that you're a fan of these bands, you should listen to them, and this, anyway. Causa Sui know their shit. This 4-track album leads off with a 24-minute epic that I really cannot stop digging on like crazy.
Nebula - Heavy Psych (EP)
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The name says it all. Nebula are seasoned masters of their trade and this is one of their best efforts.
Poseidotica - La Distancia
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Still heavy, still psychedelic, got a tinge of post-rock in there for good measure. Really good music.
Thanks for the Elliot Lipp, I haven't gotten too far into it yet but I like what I've heard so far. I'm excited for the Jason Forrest, too!
spoon_of_grimbo:
Trap Them - "Seizures in Barren Praise"
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YOUR FACE + A BRICK x 1000Holy Shit! = THIS ALBUM.
the_pied_piper:
Note to Zombietramp: This thread is no request, please read the rules
That aside, it would be rather callous to deny Johnny Foreigner to an expectant listener so here we are
Johnny Foreigner - Waited Up 'Til It Was Light
Drowned In Sound Review
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With lesser songs to call his own *Johnny Foreigner *vocalist Alexei Berrow would struggle to tempt the average listener through even three of the thirteen tracks that make up this debut album proper after last year’s Arcs Across The City EP. His shrill shrieks, at times matched wince for wince by back-up screamer Kelly Southern, a bassist likely to be a fixture on the bedroom walls of indie kids too young to have caught Melissa Auf der Mar or Charlotte Hatherley a few years back, are an acquired taste to say the least; some will flee as he crams syllables too many into a timeframe too short. Those that last the length, though, will be rewarded handsomely.
Like many music lovers unable to keep perfect pace with the ever-shifting landscape of the British underground, I was first alerted to the potential of Johnny Foreigner – affectionately known by fans, and certain DiS staffers, as JoFo, and so they shall be henceforth here – by this site’s review of Arcs Across The City (find it here). Ten out of tens are rightly rare, and while I couldn’t agree wholly with the perfect score after sampling the seven-tracker for myself, there was no denying its positives: once the barrier of that voice is broken down, one swiftly realises the excellent songwriting in action, the masterful combining of avant-indie guitar tendencies with immediate pop hooks the size of battering rams (and possessing all the subtlety). Clearly JoFo have influences that most mainstream radio listeners will never have heard of, but by manipulating these touchstones into manageable portions of frenzied riffing and fret twiddling they’ve successfully made their own material hugely accessible.
A couple of Arcs tracks make the jump from short-play release to fully formed album: ‘The End and Everything After’, essentially the opening to Harvey Danger’s ‘Flagpole Sitta’ given the once over by indie-punks super short of attention spans, is characterised (as so many of these songs are) by Berrow’s breathless diatribes, Southern chipping in to add a little sweetness to shout-along chants of “God knows what you think of us”. Throughout, third member Junior, drummer and keys, provides an essential backbone to proceedings; without this anchor of sorts, chances are the furious guitar lines would run riot entirely out of control. JoFo would display the necessary energy but lack the even more vital pop nuances. The band is, clearly, far more than the simple sum of its parts.
The other EP song to progress to this LP is ‘Yes! You Talk To Fast’, again opened by guitar work that’s impressive of pace but controlled by some propulsive drum pummelling. What Berrow is actually on about – pirates are mentioned, and there’s a decent “yo ho ho!” in there – is anyone’s guess (it’s their Blues Brothers song according to our Track-by-Track - Ed) but there’s a naggingly addictive edge to it, ensuring the song’s one of many here that firmly bed themselves into the grey matter after but a week in the album’s company. Of a similarly speedy execution are album-preceding singles ‘Our Bi-Polar Friends’ and ‘Eyes Wide Terrified’, although both also display a tenderness not always evident on JoFo’s wilder arrangements. The latter, in particular, is notable for its softly sung opening 30 seconds – a chance for Berrow to take a breath proper prior to launching into the band’s formulaic – that’s not meant in a disrespectful sense – structure of verse, chorus, verse, scream a lot.
In the album’s middle section sit two of its true standouts, ‘Hennings Favourite’ (should that have an apostrophe? It doesn’t here…) and ‘Salt, Pepa and Spinderella’. The first is in the vein of much that surrounds it – bombast and bluster, squeals and screams – but latches a sizeable motif that recalls Minus The Bear’s experimental pop-rock meanderings to a structure that’s already considerably memorable. The result is a track that’s both weirdly alien and infectious like the finest Girls Aloud offering, a song that knows not its place in the genre scheme of things. ‘Salt…’ might be named after a popular hip-hop group, but it’s sure as hell not a rap number. Rather, it rides a pulsing keys ‘n’ beats intro which Southern and Berrow vocally joust across the top of before tripping into a spoken-word tirade from our frontman. Everything’s weirdly tranquil until two minutes and six seconds in, and then: bang. Everything’s rocked up to eleven, Southern’s repeated “do-do-do”s seeping into the bloodstream. Addiction to JoFo comes easy, then, given just the right amount of exposure.
Which is, by my reckoning, roughly three and a half plays of this debut album, a record that shows other sides to this band’s personality – ‘DJs Get Doubts’ is a sweet paean to the touring life, while many lyrics relate to events unfolding in their hometown of Birmingham; ‘Cranes And Cranes And Cranes And Cranes’ shouts its fuck-yous the way of developers destroying England’s second city’s cultural draws to erect housing blocks – without ever allowing them to stray too far from the source: the yelp-at-home histrionic rock ‘n’ roll that’s already won over legions of admirers. Me, I’m another recruit to the campaign – given touring enough, and a little radio luck, it’s impossible to imagine Johnny Foreigner not becoming a household name.
Not with the parents, you understand; even I’m almost too old for this sort of passionate squall. No, the kids: it’s the kids who are going to make sure Johnny Foreigner matter for the foreseeable future. So long as they’re dancing to songs as near perfect of pop-rock shape and size as these, the world is a better place. Waited Up ‘Til It Was Light is an album of escapism, of sorts: sweat your troubles away, guys, because tomorrow’s another day and we can all deal with that shit then. It’s no 10/10 – to award such a mark for a debut album would be to ask the band to call it quits, as they’re unlikely to ever trump it – but it is a definite contender, alongside Los Campesinos!’s Hold On Now, Youngster, Foals' 'Antidotes' and Wild Beasts’ forthcoming Limbo, Panto, for home-grown debut of the year.
* Johnny Foreigner 8 / 10
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And as a bonus, their preceding EP
Johnny Foreigner - Arcs Across The City
Drowned In Sound Review
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It’s funny how Birmingham has spawned two bands of such differing quality that one is practically the critical polar opposite of the other. On one side you have The Twang, purveyors of lad-rock dirge and kings of all-things shit-core; on the other, Johnny Foreigner. Surely you don’t need a diagram to clarify which act is just about the best damn band to emerge from the nation’s second city for a long time.
Their first album – a seven-track mini-album, Arcs Across The City – introduces Johnny Foreigner as the excitable kids of new-wave indie music. This is pop music packaged with added E-numbers and dancing feet that never misstep.
The boyx2 girlx1 three-piece make clever, fast, instant guitar music. Throwaway, you say? I can tell you, with conviction, that this record hasn’t left my earphones in weeks, save for a couple of days of obligatory Radiohead listening. Be it the sweet, closely matched male-female vocal interplay that sounds the length of ‘Suicide Pact, Yeah?’, or the ADHD guitar on ‘Champagne Girls I Have Known’, this band leave you reaching for the repeat button. They’re everything good you can say about Sonic Youth, Bloc Party and Los Campesinos!, taking the best parts of said bands and twisting the mixture it into something original.
Brilliance extends way past any collective influences, though, as Johnny Foreigner have enough of their own fuel for nostalgic nuances to be ignored.‘Sofacore’ adopts a hyperactive rapid-fire formula and morphs it into a short two-minute manoeuvre, while slower acoustic number ‘All Moseley Gardens’ is tagged on as a hidden track for necessary respite – a move which should put a hush to naysayer tongues suggesting the band are limited to one cheap trick. Come the release of their debut full length, Johnny Foreigner will be unstoppable, if they’re not already at that stage already.
Arcs Across The City is the counter argument to empty bands with emptier songs, to the indie lyricists solely reliant on quick wit and cool urban references. There’s nobody in this band with a fuckwit ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ moniker, there are no retrospective ska leanings, and nothing to chant along to in drunken karaoke. It’s too fast and too clever for the usual clichés. People will complain that it would be impossible to make a music video for them without shooting it in double-speed a la _something from the television show of famous milkman Benny Hill, and that there are too many _twists and turns and bangs and wooshes for a three-minute slot on daytime radio. But I’ll tell you that the usual methods of criticism cease to matter, because this is_ a ten-out-of-ten record if ever I heard one, and I can’t name one other British band deserving of the highest accolade this year. Johnny Foreigner will have you revert to the excitable teenage fanboy that would go out and buy a band’s single in every format just for the b-sides. Y’know, _just because.
Seven songs, 21 minutes, and some of the most exciting indie-pop sounds committed to record by a British band in a long while. Arcs Across The City is the domestic debut album release of the year, hands down.
* Johnny Foreigner 10 / 10
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EDIT: Sorry, missed the bonus track for the EP
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Spluff:
Yessssss onewheelwizzard is posting again.
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