Review Summary: Imagine if Radiohead played indie-rock, were from Birmingham, listened to Sonic Youth, liked neon, and were young and nothing like Radiohead.
- or to give it its full name,
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.
You never would have guessed it back in 2008 but Johnny Foreigner are becoming one of
those bands, the ones that actually grow more difficult to describe as they get older. Is this an indie album? At times it sounds like Sonic Youth with its shallow noise and twisting, messy guitars; at others it definitely recalls fellow countrymen Los Campesinos! in its youthful refusal to show any sort of shame whatsoever as it pelts out anthem after yelped hook after spoken-word eulogy. But at times, you know, it brings to mind Radiohead, never ever in sound, but in the context of Johnny Foreigner as a trailblazing force in their scene: noise-pop or indie-punk or whatever you'd like to call it, and with an appreciation of the band's development.
Waited Up 'til It Was Light was their
Bends, superb but conventional. God knows where we are now. How do you get from that to this?
I mean, it's not like Johnny Foreigner are inventing new instruments or anything, and 'Robert Seargill Takes The Prize' sounds like it shares close family ties with 'DJs Get Doubts' from their debut album, all timidly picked guitars and matter-of-fact vocals, but the point is that I challenge any person to listen to this ridiculously titled EP for the first time and predict what's going to happen next. The layers and eclectic range of stylistic approaches to the possibilities of guitars, drums, electronics, and two of the best-suited voices in the genre render everything a half-gorgeous, half-excited soundscape, which is all the more ambitious given how the band's production has strangely become gradually more lo-fi, as well as daring, with each release.
Johnny Foreigner are actually nothing like Radiohead because their progression has been a step by step affair, and it's also fair to say that they're still in the process of refining their sound in search of the right combination to record a truly perfect album. But they deserve the comparison, because in a scene where the majority of artists normalise and pander to lowest common denominators, Johnny Foreigner throw together things which other people wouldn't think to. The result is progressive indie, packed with fuzzy basslines and handclaps and tempo changes and six tracks all of which are absolutely superb. I haven't lost faith quite yet.
