adriandenning.co.uk
album reviews

Johnny Foreigner



Waited Up Til It Was Light 8½ ( 2008 )
Lea Room / Our Bipolar Friends / Eyes Wide Terrified / Cranes and Cranes and Cranes and Cranes / The End and Everything After / Hennings Favourite / Salt, Pepper and Spindarella / Yes! You Talk Fast / DJ’s Get Doubts / Sometimes, in the Bullring / Yr All Just Jealous / Absolute Balance / The Hidden Song at the End of the Record

Twin vocalists, one male and one female. Thrashing and messy drums, actually damn good drums. Bass and guitar constantly in a rush, eschewing perfection for energy and feel. Melody lines often obtuse and so much in a rush that the songs don't sink in straight away. Lying underneath is a band with a way of create sparkling melodies, Johnny Foreigner. That said melodies are often buried beneath thrilling playing doesn't result in failure - it works. 'Waited Up Til It Was Light' manages somehow then to be one of the finest new alternative guitar debut LPs of recent years with a good strike rate in terms of consistency. Johnny Foreigner aren't yet the most diverse act around although the couple of changes of sonic atmosphere that do exist are just enough to give your kids a treat.

Not only are Johnny Foreigner good and exciting but they're also somehow genuinely moving. Well, 'Our Bipolar Friends' mentions the word Ninja worryingly early on in the song but soon gets better, a misleading intro giving way to excellently disheavelled guitar music. Lyrically, Johnny Foreigner also manage to avoid trotting out the same cliches as everybody else. Songs have catchphrases in them rather than choruses as such and this works. 'Eyes Wide Terrified' is a frankly brilliant example of what Johnny Foreigner can do, moving from noisy to soft sections, 'your life is a song but not this one' they say. Around the two-minute fifty mark the bass player proves he can really play as the other guitars disappear. Hand-claps join in, a repeated section of 'your life is a song...' before the guitars come back in.

The highlight of the songs that don't fall over each other in a rash? Well, 'Salt, Pepper And Spindarella' is the one - riding along on a soft electro pulsebeat with the vocalists creating the hooks. The highlight of the noisy songs is the magnificent 'The End And Everything After', a song previously issued on one of Johnny Foreigner's first few EPs. Johnny Foreigner create proper indie then, music your mother won't actually like, and that's how it should be.

Share Your Views?