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Home > Community > Music forum
ridiculously wonderful johnny foreigner album review
25 votes
?
by jamesdenial
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That's incredible.
What a wonderful outspilling of joy, much like the album.
hehe that is a glowing reveiw
JoFo are F-ing brilliant I get pretty excited about them too. Is this reveiw done by a DiSer?
i know pretty much nothing...
of this band. is the album really as good as this guy's trying to make out? he makes it sound a lot like los campesinos!.
No way!
JoFo > Caramel Cheesecake
AIDS > LC!
ETA: Yes, it really is that good
and the LC! phenomenon continues to astound me.
so you like johnny foreigner but cant
understand why people like los campesinionos! huh?
Pretty much.
yep me too
Los Camp! are good but they can't touch JoFo for tunes.
From what I've heard of them
they are 'more of a mess' version of los campesinos. Doesn't really do much for me.
I would say JoFo > LC!
I can understand the LC!/JoFo comparison (boy/girl vocals, etc) but I just think based on their albums I really think that Waited Up Til It Was Light is totally brilliant whereas while I found the LC! album really fun and good, I stopped listening after about two weeks.
This is just it though........
they aren't a version of anything, but if they were it certainly wouldn't be LC!
To my ears they sound nothing like them whatsoever.
Well I guess we all heard things differently
Probably if you really love them then you hear them completely differently. I never really understood why loads of people used to compare Idlewild to REM.
I think they are a much tighter more direct version of LC! if anything
LC!'s album has some good tracks but I found it a bit messy. Fuck it I like them both but JoFo beat LC! by quite a way for me.
great album, review is a bit silly...
they are one of the bands i have most space for in my heart, but to say they don't sound like lots of other bands basically implies you don't listen to that much music..
hey!
that's by TOM WHYMAN!
who?
.
He's on DiS aint he?
MelesMeles maybe?
if I rember right maybe I could be wrong I don't take much notice I have read his blog some times and it sounds like him.
still silly.
.
I like a bit of pasion in music writing
You're silly.
every inch the consumate banter milestone.
.
Hi!
I think I've just broken through to the mainstream.
good work
:))))
are they another one of those bands
people on here will go mental about for a month or two and then forget all about them?
I was talking to someone who does write reviews for DiS,
and he described them as being very much a Drowned In Sound band, which does have some connotations of the slightly fickle nature of DiS, but I think they're more likely to end up like Foals than, say, Youthmovies, since they are quite poppy, albeit quite manic pop.
They're in a funny position, I think
because I've heard their name bandied about for a while as a hype band, but they don't get played by Zane Lowe and only made their feature NME debut last week. Basically, the press hype exists within this domain. When I saw them last month they got eighteen people, support included.
Definitely true,
and they definitely need to break out from this particular indie ghetto. It does get weird, because Drowned In Sound does have a pretty large readership and all, and even though they pretty much give handlove to JoFo, they're still not *that* well known, even in an indie way.
I went to a gig at Jabez Clegg (which will presumably be talked about in their May tour-diary), and it was actually awful, in that toilet-venue gig-from-hell kinda way. That said, the amount of touring they're doing can only help, can't it?
i was a fan of this review BEFORE IT EVEN PROPERLY EXISTED
now you're all just jumping on the bandwagon. man, i'm so indie.
also, i would like to take full credit for the question mark at the end of that first sentence.
WHY DOES EVERY FUCKING BAND SOUND LIKE PAVEMENT
I like JoFo actually
still
yes this album
really is that fucking good! find it online, ain't hard...
Better yet, buy the fucking thing.
I understand the LC comparison, young punters that have been listening to music for a couple years 'all in'. What else are they going to compare it to, it's just lazy...
In any case, their influences are far from bands out now. I hear bits of Pixies, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Violent Femmes, Fugazi, etc. (also, I'm old enough to be your older uncle)
But I'm sure Johnny Foreigner will come up with all sorts of more left of center bands like Owls and other bands from Chicago circa 1993...
true
there are obvious signs of Pavement and Sonic Youth, but so have LC (especially Pavement, if you find an LC review without mentioning them I'll be amazed). As they have both come about round about the same time and sound reasonably similar, I think it is a fair comparison.
They're both
shouty boy/girl pop bands with lots of American underground influences on their music (whole "Pitchfork effect" innit), and plus they've toured together and are just generally kindred spirits, so they're bound to be grouped together to some extent, but really they both have their own distinct sound.
I've still not got into this Johnny Foreigner phenomenon.
I've heard a couple of songs and they were okay but my life remained relatively unchanged afterwards.
What's their absolute best song that's free to listen to somewhere?
sofacore?
Maybe... Can't find any mp3 links though
if you're into the whole last.fm thing
their mini-album is fully streamable here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Johnny+Foreigner/Arcs+Across+The+City
Yes! You Talk Too Fast is the best song on there imo. Good clean fun.
hype machine has some tracks
hypem.com
I wish people would stop saying they sounded like Cap'n Jazz.
They sound fuck all like Cap'n Jazz. It seems that in the last year or so, every new thing has "sounded like Cap'n Jazz".
It's a lazy comparison.
Clearly influenced by though
-
It's the guitars that sound like Cap'n Jazz. Not the music. But Alexei genuinely loves the Kinsellas. And plays a bit like Villareal. Take the tapping halfway through "Eyes Wide Terrified" or the intro to "Yes! You Talk Too Fast" as bonafide examples.
If you can't see just a little Kinsella/Villareal there then, well, you're just being difficult.
The guitars but not the music...ummm?
It's still a lazy comparison for people who know nothing about the 90's midwest scene. "oh shit, messy guitars, a bit of twiddly work there, MUST BE CAP N JAZZ THEN YEAH?". It's not that it's incorrect, it's just annoying.
You seem angry
Nah, i'm fine!
It's too long
The positioning of 'DJs Get Doubts' is awkward.
It tails off significantly towards the end.
84%
^
spot on
imo after salt, pepa it just dies down. i love absolute balance mind
I wish MM wouldn't beat around the bush
Does he like it or doesn't he? ;)
JoFo are good, but S/E good? Yeaa...No. Hell no.
only criticism is that it is a little one-paced...
best thing i've heard in a while though.
I downloaded 3 tracks to see what the fuss is all about
I had recurring nightmares, woke up covered in what can only be described as "human grease", formatted my hard drive, washed my ears out with bleach and repeatedly threw up on the bus merely recalling clicking "Save target as"...
.
whatttttt?
Aren't they just...
awful?
Twee dual vocal rubbish, harking back to a set of ideas that were pretty terrible at the height of indie blandness in the late 90's, let alone now. Nasally singers trying to sound American but failing miserably.
Reminded me of Seafood. Except not nearly as good.
Maybe I'm missing something (and this is probably the wrong place to state such things), but God I really, really hated them
Grammatical pedantry, I know
but the response "whatttttt?" doesn't necessarily suggest agreement and thus the requirement to start the response "aren't they just...?"
Obviously you're very wrong and consequently must die, but I'm guessing you knew that.
I wasn't implying that in an agreeing manner by the way
Rather than being said like "Oh yeah I know, aren't they just awful?" I meant "But hang on... aren't they just... awful?"
On dying however, more than happy to do so at some point. I'd just rather it was after this band have been removed from my ipod in case it counts against me at the Pearly* gates
I dont agree at all but....
I like the way you said it even if it gave me far to much of a visual image of a greasy geek puking on a bus... good work.
Yeah i wasn't agreeing.
I was wandering what the hell you were on about.
If music makes you wake up in "human grease" you have a terrible problem and suggest you maybe visit the doctor.
Unless you mean they are actually too good for your ears and you get some kind of allergic reaction to their amaziness then fair enough.
If this bloke ever heard Fucked Up he'd have a coronary
http://music.guardian.co.uk/newbands/story/0,,2279959,00.html
hehe they are definatly the havyest
band that person has ever seen hehe.