Sunday 29 January 2012

Yr Friends Have Been Lying To You


Johnny Foreigner have always had a talent for soft, delicate ballads of heartbreak and this EP from lead singer Alexei Berrow feels almost like a collection of their finest, quiet tracks. It wraps you up in gentle guitar melodies and Berrows’ trademark; quotable, repeated choruses will swirl around your head long after you stop listening.

His talent for narrating a story in an engaging but deeply personal way is concentrated on this short release, thanks in part to the beautifully sparse arrangement. Over a sea-shanty like rocking guitar he murmurs, “I think he’d be good for you, I think you’d be good for each other “. One of the best things about Johnny Foreigner is their ability to be widely relatable to - without becoming clichéd and while I’m being careful to try and view this out of the context of Johnny Foreigner, this still comes across
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There’s something addictive and affecting in the simple guitar melodies and Berrows’ despondent tone, perhaps why this EP feels like it’s for escaping in to on a lonely journey on a misty evening. Maybe even thinking about how (as the first song is titled) ‘the walk home was not as dramatic as you’d hoped for’. Again, their brilliant descriptions of tiny scences of teenage love, heartbreak and day-to-day life are partly what make Johnny Foreigner such a great band and this EP just shows what a talented song-writer Berrow is. Well worth £3.

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