Yr Friends Have Already Left

Alexei Berrow of Johnny Foreigner is almost disgustingly productive, not six months have passed since the last EP from his solo project Yr Friends - and in that time Johnny Foreigner released their brilliant third album 'Vs Everything'. Such prolificacy would be annoying, except anyone who finds more music from Berrow/Jo-Fo to be a bad thing is clearly not listening properly, if at all.  This EP is in much the same vein as his previous release, 'Yr Friends Have Been Lying To You', which we described as "wrapping you up in gentle guitar melodies... addictive and affecting".

This time Berrow sighs his accounts of bills, exhaustion, late nights and hope over soft electronic humming and warm harmonies, rather than the gently plucked guitar of the previous EP. It gives you a fleeting glimpse, on a misty night, in to Berrow's world - he promises to "sing from the heart" and he does. The stories he weaves are given all the more weight for the authenticity they communicate. But it's not all beautifully worded realism, on the fourth track things get a bit more morbid "I wanna sea burial, I won't leave a mark". Tackling money woes, relationships and death in less than 17 minutes, it's a real gem and we can only hope there's yet still more to come.

Buy it for only £4

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.