Postscript: Johnny Foreigner's "Stop Talking About Ghosts"

While we ended up having enough restraint to edit the final version of yesterday's album review down from well over 1,200 words, there is still more we need to say concerning Johnny Foreigner's recent goings-on. Namely, that the Birmingham, England-based quartet issued Monday a digital single for the tune "Stop Talking About Ghosts," which includes some epic b-sides. The song is a central cut on the foursome's magnificent new collection You Can Do Better, which we unreservedly recommend. Chief among the b-sides -- in case you didn't see us raving on Facebook -- is Johnny Foreigner's scorching rendition of Swedish legends The Wannadies' rager "Hit." We've told this backstory here many times, we're sure, but it bears repeating. In early 1997, we were minding our business in Amsterdam when we were overtaken by a rainy day, and we spent that day inside doing whatever while watching MTV Europe. MTV Europe had in rotation at the time the video for The Wannadies' "Hit," and it blew us away (and, goddamnit, the clip is now region blocked for America -- THANKS OBAMA). Once we saw the video, we felt like we had little choice but to sit right in the basement bar we'd taken refuge in to see how many more times we could see the video again before passing out. It was that good. And the process, sitting and watching MTV, waiting for video to cycle around again, was a replay of a cherished experience from our youth, when we'd sit and sit and wait for a certain classic Van Halen clip, or maybe Rainbow's "All Night Long," to come back around.

So it was a brilliant day, that day in Amsterdam, and one made all the more brilliant by "Hit." The Wannadies never really cracked America, despite making some inroads with their "You And Me Song," which was prominently featured on the "Romeo + Juliette" soundtrack. And because the band never gained a footing here, they have always sort of just been "our" band, in a way not dissimilar to how Johnny Foreigner is sort of (OK, totally is) "our band." The fact that the Birmingham, England-based noise-pop giants chose to cover "Hit" is the very definition of serendipity, and one that makes us very happy. And it certainly makes the value proposition of the "Stop Talking About Ghosts" single that much greater. As if the music itself wasn't inducement enough, however, all money raised from the sale of the single goes to the Cavell Nurses Trust, which offers emergency financial support to nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants in the UK. So, while you could be a deadbeat and just grab these three awesome songs -- oh, right, there's also a ridiculously heavy reimagining of the Vs. Everything track "Vs. You" -- for free, well, don't do that. Instead, help Johnny Foreigner and its label Alcopop! support this very worthy cause. Stream all three tracks via the embed below, and click through to purchase and support Cavell. You can do it. For more information about "Stop Talking About Ghosts," read fronter Alexei Berrow's song-for-song breakdown of You Can Do Better right here. And in the event you are in need of some light reading, Johnny Foreigner has just published all the words to the new record right here.

Review: Johnny Foreigner | You Can Do Better

"Last night you told me: tomorrow we shall have to think up signs, sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan on the double page of day and paper. Tomorrow, we shall have to invent, once more, the reality of this world." -- O. Paz, trans. E. Bishop, Jan. 1, 1975

The blunder many may make when it comes to Johnny Foreigner's brilliant new long-player You Can Do Better is to consider it only in terms of what it is not, instead of the glorious what that it is. The Birmingham, England-based noise pop legends' prior record, the titanic, immersive third LP Johnny Foreigner Vs. Everything, casts a gigantic shadow, to be sure, and birthing that one, according to a recent interview, substantially sapped chief songwriter Alexei Berrow's creative energies for months ("Tbh I spent a good 6 months not wanting to admit I didn't want another record," Mr. Berrow told GoldFlakePaint). And just as Vs. Everything became an obstacle for Berrow, something similar could conceivably befall fans, whose brows perhaps furrowed with the announcement of the new collection as they pondered just how Johnny Foreigner could possibly top itself. It's wrong-headed thinking. The fact is that the band's fourth record You Can Do Better is a powerful, diabolically catchy set, a compact firecracker of a record that ably and convincingly delivers the band's intelligent brand of bash and pop. The music is as dramatic and as emotionally vital as ever. The Brummies have stared down the challenge of its own album title.

You Can Do Better is packed with bracing guitar anthems. Opener "Shipping" bursts into being with careening guitar and thunder from the rhythm section, smoothly interpolates quiet reflection, and then surrenders to a boisterous pre-chorus. "Le Sigh," which leads a parade of tunes that each could be standout singles, touts blissful feedback, engaging vocal harmonies, and no small amount of shouting. A fully realized version of the crushing, meditative ballad "Riff Glitchard," which appeared in a more skeletal form on last year's Manhattan Projects EP, breaks the pace of the new collection. Its helpless lyric "I might as well be an organ in your body, the damage I do, when I do nothing," is even more beautifully rendered here by bassist Kelly Southern, whose voice takes center stage more often on You Can Do Better than ever before. The last half of the record breathlessly blows by, from the blinding "Stop Talking About Ghosts" and its desperate revelation ("the hardest part is letting go"), to the lethal hooks of "Wifi Beach," upon whose lyric the album's fixation with an imaginary, dream-like metropolis turns, and through to the thrumming, majestic and self-aware closer "Devastator."

Rather than casting a shadow, one aspect of Vs. Everything actually illuminates You Can Do Better: the alternate universe / timeline / reality. The subject drove a substantial portion of the narrative to the former LP, and particularly its transcendent ballad "Alternate Timelines Piling Up." And, in a way, Berrow manifested just such an alternate reality in retooling his songwriting post-Everything for the band's new four-piece configuration (second guitarist/master propagandist Lewes Herriot officially joined the band after the recording of the third LP). Something about that change fired his imagination, and allowed it to escape the insatiable gravity of Vs. Everything. The result is a loud, clever and entirely thrilling noise-pop album, one that ironically echoes not the oft-cited prior record, but the band's aggressive and ambitious first LP, Waited Up Til It Was Light. In essence, and via a not small amount of mental jiu jitsu on the part of Berrow (again, to GoldFlakePaint: "I guess the simple answer is that I lied. In as much as an actor or author lies. I created like, an alternate universe me, that could make decisions and do whatever I told him to in order to reveal greater truths."), Johnny Foreigner has been reborn as a better version of a younger collective self.

You Can Do Better will be released by Johnny Foreigner's longtime label, Oxford, England's Alcopop! Records, Monday in the UK. There is as yet no public plan to release the collection in the U.S., but what Alcopop! is offering is, as always, very hard to beat: You Can Do Better is available as a 12" LP, CD or digital download, and depending on how fast one acts additional premiums include sparkle vinyl and a poster-size map of an imaginary metropolis that is apparently central to the record. There's probably even other stuff that we forgot; click through to the Alcopop! store to apprise yourself of your full slate of commerce options. Johnny Foreigner's You Can Do Better tour of the UK begins March 13. The quartet will perform all-dates with South African fifth man/keytar assassin Ben Rausch, and primary support for the tour are labelmates Radstewart. Full tour dates are posted right here; European dates are being finalized and please God Please GOD PLEASE let's have the band back to the U.S., yeah?

Johnny Foreigner: Internets | Bandcamp | Facebook | Soundcloud | Tumblr







Prior Johnny Foreigner Coverage:
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Names EP
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Johnny Foreigner Vs. Everything
Cut The Rope And Jump Off: Johnny Foreigner On Alternate Timelines, Optimism And Everything
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Certain Songs Are Cursed EP
Review: Johnny Foreigner | You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star But Yr Eyes Were Blurred With Tears And That Lighthouse Can Be Pretty Deceiving...
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Grace And The Bigger Picture
Review: Johnny Foreigner | WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Waited Up 'Til It Was Light
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Arcs Across The City EP
That Was The Show That Was: Johnny Foreigner | Bowery Ballroom

Young Adults, Grooms, Ovlov and Soccer Mom | Great Scott, Boston | 11 July



We snuck a sideways reference to Ovlov into our Speedy Ortiz review last week -- despite the trio not hailing from Massachusetts, which was sort of the point we were making -- as sort of a last-ditch effort to make a timely mention of the rising Connecticut grunge-pop goliath. The act released its full-length debut Am a week ago, but our plate had been too full to really give the LP the attention it deserved. By Saturday, however, Ovlov had been added to this Thursday's upcoming white-hot Grooms/Young Adults/Soccer Mom bill, and voila! A new news peg was born. Ovlov itself is by no means new, as its Bandcamp bastion offers a couple EPs and a single, the earliest of which arrived in 2009. However, Am has significantly raised the profile of the act, presently a threesome of brothers Steve, Theo and Jon Hartlett (as the youngest of three boys, this writer can only imagine the fisticuffs that occur in the van). Theirs is a refreshing and thrilling collection of songs, one surprisingly nimble given the degree of sludge tossed up across the stereo field. It's the kind of record that we expect you'll see compared a fair amount to Dinosaur Jr.'s classic You're Living All Over Me, and we're willing to submit that, goddamn, that's not too far off. It is big melodies and a precise rhythm section that move Am relentlessly forward, and we think that once you latch on to the Soundcloud stream embedded below, you'll find it hard to stop listening. We direct your attention to the opener "Grapes," as it touts the tunefulness of Swedish pop geniuses The Wannadies and the raw power of Glaswegian noise-pop titans Projekt A-ko. Another of the many highlights of Am is the slack strummer "Where's My Dini?", which is one of several tracks that features vocals from Speedy Ortiz fronter Sadie Dupuis. Exploding In Sound Records released Am July 2, and it is on offer as a limited edition 12" vinyl LP (purportedly pressed to "piss yellow" and "swamp green" media) and digital download. You can purchase one or both via Ovlov's aforementioned Bandcamp page right here.

Of course, Thursday night is about much more than just Ovlov, as Clicky Clicky stalwarts Young Adults and Soccer Mom are also slated to perform, and the evening is top-lined by the New York band every band seems to want to be playing with these days, Grooms. All of the above happens at Great Scott in Allston, and as of this writing tickets are still available. While we were at the beach last month Young Adults issued a pretty sweet video for its tune "Spectre" that is well worth your eyeballs, check that out right here. As for Soccer Mom, the band is allegedly in the midst of recording for a future release, and we're hopeful that there may even be new music to hear from the band before the year is out (a man can dream, can't he?). Anyway, go to Great Scott Thursday, make that your way of taking a stand against The Man, at least this week. It's the big, big show in Boston Thursday, and all the dizzles are at this Facebook event pizzle.

Today's Hotness: Hisoft, The Wannadies

>> We've been informed that Steve Keller -- who had drummed for Philadelphia dream poppers Hisoft as well as the Precollections-era iteration of Kurt Heasley's inveterately chameleonesque band Lilys -- died Dec. 23. Linked above is an undated video of Hisoft performing the amazing track "Josef Albers," which was released as the flip of a single by The Low Numbers, a defunct precursor band to Hisoft. We just got our hands on the song after scouring the Internets for several years; longtime readers will recall these posts. As part of all the snooping about online referenced in those links we got in touch with someone who had a cache of Low Numbers recordings, including the aforementioned "Josef Albers," which we were thrilled to finally receive last week. The aforementioned track was the b-side to the "Telekom" single released on Pittsburgh's Numeric label in the late '90s, although the song clearly maintained some currency with Low Numbers and Hisoft fronter Gerhardt Koerner, as Hisoft continued to perform the number. The act released its sole EP Amateur in 2006 on Chocolate Hearts and if you don't own it you need to seriously reconsider what your priorities are in life. Anyway, sad news. While we don't know if Mr. Keller drummed on the recording, for what it is worth here's an MP3 of "Josef Albers," regarding which there is no information anywhere (we mean anywhere, not GEMM, not MusicStack.com) about purchasing the song or the "Telekom" single. Like many great songs, it would seem to have disappeared with the 20th Century.

The Low Numbers -- "Josef Albers" -- "Telekom" b/w "Josef Albers" single
[right click and save as]

>> It is a strange feeling indeed when one learns that one's favorite acts have been around for 20 years. This landmark is being claimed by :: clicky clicky :: fave Swedish indie rockers The Wannadies. The band's song "Hit" is a high water mark, and the video for same made such a strong impression on us one rainy day in Amsterdam that we insisted on watching MTV Europe until the clip rotated back through the lineup once more. We seem to talk about this song or video at least three or four times a year, and we highly recommend watching the video, as the song is one of a handful that never fail to incite an urge to smash things every time we hear it. Anyway, an email from the band reports that Wannadies will issue an EP of new material this year as well as a hits compilation, although the cool kids among you should already own the self-titled 1997 set that RCA foisted on America that mashed up some Wannadies records and singles and is probably a servicable proxy for a hits collection. Since the last Wannadies record was issued in 2003 fronter Par Wiksten has kept busy producing and writing tracks for acts including Bosses Vanner and Edith. So there. When we learn more about the EP we'll let you know.

Today's Hotness: Wannadies, Wicked Farleys, Tony Allen

>> We've been obsessed with our favorite Swedish act The Wannadies since we saw the video for their song "Hit" on MTV Europe a decade ago. Our obsession has been somewhat tempered by the fact that the quintet only had one US release, so virtually all of their records must be purchased from abroad via the Internets. Consequently, at this point we've just gotten the self-titled US release a several of the CD singles released in the UK. With today's exchange rates, we're obviously not buying a lot of their records right now, even though we have a goal of getting all the band's full lengths that use the sleeping people theme we talked about here. The reason we're mentioning all of this is that the band has put together a blog with YouTube links to all of their videos right here. So go there, watch the video for "Hit" -- seriously, this song should have been as big as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and it pains us every time we watch the video that it was not -- and then check out other clips at your leisure. Some of the early stuff is really bizarre late '80s acoustic pop. Weird. We do love seeing those fashions again, however. Anyway, if you could go to Sweden and buy all the Wannadies records on vinyl you can find for us, we'd be grateful. So what's up with the band now? Well, they've been asking fans to submit tracks for inclusion on a compilation. Wannadies have also recorded new songs it intended to release as a single or EP, but its efforts at releasing the material are as usual being stymied by label stuff.

>> Resurgent blog Built On A Weak Spot has a very nice overview of erstwhile Boston indie rockers The Wicked Farleys. We think we saw the band play a reunion show in our pre-blog days with Logie, and via him we first discovered the band through their inclusion on Holiday Matinee's Pedal Faster, Bicycle Rider compilation from the turn of the century. Built On A Weak Spot has the track from the compilation (with a mix that sounds a little different, we'll have to compare), the excellent "Fitchburg, MA," available for download along with several tracks we've never heard before but about which we are very excited. "Dig The Ring" sounds like an early Lilys cut in places; "Opportune" has a Swirlies kind of edge to it. Anyway, dynamite post, go check it out.

>> If, like us, you didn't know Afro-beat legend Tony Allen from Tony Randall (well, okay, we knew he wasn't Tony Randall) before the renowned drummer joined Damon Albarn's superlative supergroup The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Aurgasm has a couple tunes here to get you caught up. The pair of bumping tracks are from drummer Allen's 2002 release Home Cookin'.