Johnny Foreigner Third Record Underway, Plotting Single, Tour, Chicanery

We haven't had adequate time to keep readers apprised of the goings-on of our top-serious favorite band since publishing a review of their excellent but exhaustingly titled EP here in November. Sure there was the Stagecoach split single, and various YouTuberies. But what has Johnny Foreigner been up to the last several months? The big news is the Birmingham, England-based noise-pop titans are in the midst of recording its third full-length, according to this post at Formspring. Johnny Foreigner are producing the as-yet-untilted set themselves, which we in indie rock call "doing the Fugazi." Another Formspring post states that the band will issue the first single from the pending collection in mid-April; as there has been no other announcement or plan for pre-orders, we're guessing this will be a digital single.

Record No. 3 is being created with the help (we presume of the engineering variety) of Sunset Cinema Club fronter Dom James, who has recorded a number of JoFo b-sides over the years. Off the top of our heads we know that Mr. James recorded the two songs released in the .zip file titled Johnny Foreigner Is Aces released in Feb. 2009, but we think he may have also recorded the tracks for the fabled Johnny Foreigner/Sunset Cinema Club split single released on Laundrette Recording Company in 2007 with the 3-D sleeve art. According to Twitter the band recently "re-amped" the guitars for a Deftones-styled guitar attack, which apparently is going to be polarizing? There will likely be grand piano, and as of early February drums had already been tracked on five songs.

Based on a lengthy blog post from February in which fronter Alexei Berrow disclosed the plan for the next record's album art, there are at least 15 songs being considered for the new collection, or at least the new collection and its attendant b-sides. Considering the band sorta cleared the decks of unofficial releases in February with the release of the digital EP There When You Need It, we wonder whether that is going to be 15 all-new tracks. That would be sort of amazing, but not unlike our heroes, who have churned out an abundance of songs during the last five years, more songs than most bands probably ever write ever. Right?

In the time-honored manner of How Things Art Done, Johnny Foreigner have plotted a tour of the UK in April, which you'll notice is right around the time we are supposed to be seeing the new single. Makes you excited, right? Remember during the last album cycle when you tore yourself away from listening to the Projekt A-ko record long enough to dig on "Feels Like Summer?" We're sure Johnny Foreigner has one like that sitting up their sleeves. The dour, soulful and largely unamplified tracks of recent months are wonderful, but we feel a rock song coming on. We feel it. Tour dates are below, as are embeds and buy links for the tunes on There When You Need It. Act accordingly.



APRIL TOUR WHAT HAS NO NAME YET

04/02 -- Edinburgh -- Haddowfest
04/03 -- Edinburgh -- Haddowfest
04/18 -- Wakefield -- The Hop
04/19 -- Aberdeen -- Cafe Drummonds
04/20 -- Glasgow -- Nice n Sleazy
04/22 -- Nottingham -- Bodega Social
04/23 -- Preston -- Mad Ferret
04/24 -- Milton Keynes -- Sno Bar
04/26 -- Birmingham -- Hare & Hounds
04/27 -- Liverpool -- The Shipping Forecast
04/28 -- Manchester -- Night & Day
04/29 -- Stoke -- Underground

Hear It Now: Johnny Foreigner's "Tru Punx"

It's not available for sale until Nov. 15 (and we've learned it will be available digitally via Amazon here, likely elsewhere obvs too). But the lovely folks at Alcopop! just posted "Tru Punx," one of two Johnny Foreigner tracks gracing that band's forthcoming split single with Stagecoach. The song is awesome. You should listen to it over and over again until you get dizzy from not eating or breathing. We've heard pre-orders are booking fast, so if you have not yet given Alcopop! your money for this thing, you'd best do so soon. Here's the link.

Tru Punx - Johnny Foreigner by alcopop

Review: Johnny Foreigner | You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star But Yr Eyes Were Blurred With Tears And That Lighthouse Can Be Pretty Deceiving...

Johnny Foreigner's guitarist and primary songwriter Alexei Berrow in September summed up the Birmingham, England-based noise pop titans' forthcoming, six-track EP as containing the loudest and quietest songs it has ever recorded. This may be true, but Mr. Berrow's mild description minimizes the completely enveloping moods the music evokes, downplays the exciting developments in songwriting captured in the collection, and only hints at the aural and stylistic variety of You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star But Yr Eyes Were Blurred With Tears And That Lighthouse Can Be Pretty Deceiving With The Sky So Clear And Sea So Calm. The second half of "The Wind And The Weathervanes" is towering and anthemic and atmospheric, weaving together feedback, strings and crashing percussion. The aggressive "Who Needs Comment Boxes When You've Got Knives" points affirmatively in the direction of scene contemporaries Calories as well as hardcore legends Texas Is The Reason. The beautiful, droning closer "Yr Loved" flickers futilely, like a candle drowning in a pool of its own wax, and recalls earlier Smog. "Elegy For Post-Teenage Living (Parts 1 and 2)" is two different songs sewn together, opening as a familiar Johnny Foreigner guitar pop anthem but ending as a light, Dismemberment Plan-referencing dance pop nodder.

Despite Berrow's assertion here in September that the release lacks a theme, the lyrics persistently reflect narratives about letting go and trying to move on (or, pretending to let go and pretending to try to move on). While it perhaps incorrectly posits linearly chronological songwriting, the theme fits nicely, actually, at the end of the sequence comprised by Johnny Foreigner's two full-length recordings: Waited Up Til It Was Light was generally about Birmingham, and Grace And The Bigger Picture was generally about being away from Birmingham and the personal joys and fractures that result. You Thought You Saw... would seem to more closely examine the fractures and contextualize them in a world that has kept going in spite of it all.

It says something about the unchecked creativity and prolificness of Johnny Foreigner that the EP (which at one point carried the working title There When You Need It) doesn't contain what are arguably the best tracks it has released this year to date: the stunning demo version of "With Who, Who And What I've Got" has been freely available for download since May, and the bottomlessly poignant "199x" was given to only the couple dozen fans who ordered plush ghosts as part of the Exorcism Project. That the threesome didn't feel the need to include the two as-yet-unalbumed tracks on the EP underscores that Johnny Foreigner continues to somehow perfect more songs than it has the time and energy to market via what is the (largely dying) traditional music business model. And there is still more unalbumed songs waiting in the wings: fans who submit photos for use as part of the unique, crowdsourced sleeve art for the EP will receive a download code for the track "JFNV" (according to the band "it's pronounced nihonjin no tame no yakei"). Two more tracks grace a split single with labelmates Stagecoach; Alcopop is already taking orders for the single here, and it contains Johnny Foreigner's new "True Punx" and the band's cover of Stagecoach's "45."

Alcopop releases You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star But Yr Eyes Were Blurred With Tears And That Lighthouse Can Be Pretty Deceiving With The Sky So Clear And Sea So Calm as a 12" later this month, but the collection has been available for weeks via digital music storefronts serving North America in an effort to capitalize on Johnny Foreigner's just-ended tour here supporting incendiary Cardiff collective Los Campesinos!

[buy the EP from EMusic | ITunes]

Johnny Foreigner: Internerds | Facebook | YouTube | Flickr

Today's Hotness: Johnny Foreigner, Mobius Band, Yuck

Oh, the things we haven't had a chance to report during our very busy last several weeks. Let's catch up together, shall we?

>> Birmingham, England-based noise pop titans Johnny Foreigner are presently in the midst of their first full tour of North America (mostly the U.S.), where they've been supporting the truly terrific Los Campesinos! But the big news is the announcement of two releases on new label Alcopop! The first is an EP confoundingly titled You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star But Yr Eyes Were Blurred With Tears And That Lighthouse Can Be Pretty Deceiving With The Sky So Clear And Sea So Calm, and it contains six songs: "The Wind And The Weathervanes," "Who Needs Comment Boxes When You've Got Knives," "Elegy For Post Teenage Living (Parts 1 and 2)," "Robert Scargill Takes The Prize," "Harriet By Proxy" and "Yr Loved." Alcopop! will issue the EP in November in physicial and digital editions, but the EP is already available to North American ITunes shoppers [LINK] as a way to harness the hype the band hopes to generate during the current tour. The physical release of You Thought You Saw... will feature unique art for each unit shifted, which art is being crowdsourced from actual photos being submitted by fans. More deets about that right here. The second release Johnny Foreigner will do with Alcopop is a split single with new labelmates Stagecoach. The split, limited to 500 copies and carrying a Nov. 15 release date, features each band performing one of their own songs as well as one song by the other act. Johnny Foreigner's contributions are the new track "Tru Punx" and Stagecoach's "Good Luck With Your 45;" Stagecoach turn in what is apparently an amazing acoustic version of Johnny Foreigner's "Salt, Peppa and Spinderella" and the new track "Not Even Giles (... Would Say We'll Be OK)." The two bands tour the UK from 18 November through 11 December, and you can see all the tour dates here at ThisIsFakeDIY. Pre-orders for the Johnny Foreigner EP will be taken imminently; the JoFo/Stagecoach split will be sold on the bands' tour, but we have it on good authority there will be some copies stocked in the Alcopop! store and Banquet Records is already doing pre-orders as well.

>> Reformed post-rockers/electropop geniuses Mobius Band officially announced its hiatus. This is sad, in a rented hatchback. The very fine trio has released to date two excellent full length recordings and a seemingly endless number of EPs, and we're sad to see the band taking an indefinite break, although that break has been going on for what seems like a couple years at this point, so it is not exactly a shock. Each band member continues pursuing musical interests. Guitarist Ben Sterling's Cookies project already has a 10" record on offer with the tracks "Summer Jam" b/w "Throw A Parade." The a-side sounds very much of a piece with the Heaven-era Mobius Band stuff, and features a very solid female vocalist whose identity we don't know. Both tracks can be downloaded or streamed at the Cookies web hacienda right here. Ah, what the hell, here's the link to the .zip file, have at it, music aficionadoes. Cookies will make its live debut Nov. 5 in Manhattan at Mercury Lounge. Mobius Band drummer Noam Schatz -- seriously, the drummingest mofo you will ever meet, by the way -- has a new project LOLFM and an album of electropop gems titled We Are Its Waves freely downloadable from Bandcamp right here. Bassist Peter Sax also has free rock on offer under the nom de rock Ladies And Gentlemen; check out "Up To Us" here and "What You Could" here. All of these new musics have their charms, but we certainly harbor hopes the trio will be reconstituted at some later date. Mobius Band, we salute you.

>> Superlative upstart indie rockers Yuck, who make their US debut in Boston at Paradise Rock Club next Wednesday who recently cancelled their planned US dates (see comment), have signed with Fat Possum. The label will release the London-based act's full-length debut -- as-yet untitled -- in early 2011; the set will be issued in Europe by The Pharmacy Recording Company around the same time. Preceding the full-length will be a US single on Fat Possum for Yuck's "Georgia" b/w "The Base Of A Dream Is Empty." The single will be issued Nov. 23; fans, of course, know that "Georgia" was previously issued as a single in the U.K. in March. U.K. fans have a new, 12" Yuck single to look forward to as well: "Rubber" b/w "The Base Of A Dream Is Empty" and "Dark Magnet" will be released Nov. 1 on The Pharmacy Recording Company. If you haven't yet heard "Georgia" in all of its Yo La Tengo-esque deliciousness, feast your ears on this.

Yuck -- "Georgia" -- "Georgia" b/w "The Base Of A Dream Is Empty"
[right click and save as]
[pre-order the single from Fat Possum right here]

Everything Is Alright Forever: Johnny Foreigner Signs To Alcopop! Two Releases Planned, Ghosts Sell Out, American Tour Announcement Imminent

Sometimes being in a different time zone from your favorite band cuts your way, and some days you find yourself chasing the news cycle because you are slaving at the day job while said band finally divulges closely guarded secrets. But perhaps you've been shackled to a desk and monitor yourself, in which case this is the news: Birmingham, England-based noise pop titans Johnny Foreigner announced today it "walk[ed] away from doing a third record with Best Before" and instead will issue its "next couple of releases" on the charming Alcopop! label, home to indie standouts including prog pop geniuses Screaming Maldini. Oxford-based Alcopop! will release in November a six-track Johnny Foreigner EP on 12" vinyl presently germinating under the working title There When You Need It. The trio will promote the 12" -- which it describes as "a schizoid collection of 6 songs that have no common theme apart from us thinking they fit together, like a photo scrapbook of summer adventures or some weird dream where the scenery changed and you didn't notice" -- with a U.K. tour supported by now-labelmates Stagecoach. The 12" package will also include a postcard for each song designed by longtime Johnny Foreigner visual collaborator Lewes Herriot, and the band also recently sent away to have made certain Grace And The Bigger Picture-themed badges Mr. Herriot designed some time ago. According to Johnny Foreigner's epic-lengthed missive here, three of the songs are in a drop-D tuning, and those were recorded by off-again, on-again producing type Dom James, and another of the songs is "probably the loudest we've ever been;" other songs were recorded in bedrooms.

Additionally, Johnny Foreigner promises next week to announce details of a years-in-the-making U.S. tour -- we can't wait. In other news, Johnny Foreigner put up for sale briefly today a run of 20 plush ghosties that can be seen here; the ghosts sold out in a half-hour, sadly, but the band has hinted at a second run. The ghosties came with lyrics, other stuff, and a download of a new track called "199x," which is "a sad new song we made especially for this project that you can't hear anywhere else." The song is unsurprisingly wonderful, but then actually it is also wonderful in surprising ways. Singer/guitarist Alexei Berrow takes a different, gentler, layered approach to delivering the lyric, the song is anchored by a few different piano tracks and mellow acoustic guitar and we think an unamplified electric guitar, and super minimal non-percussion. It is fragile and beautiful and it almost hurts to listen to it, and at the same time the track sounds fresh and like your oldest friend at the same time. An unqualified, stunning victory.

More bulletins as events warrant.