Review: Johnny Foreigner Vs Everything

“We’ve made the record that sounds like we do in our heads … there’s nothing we’d change or tweak, nothing we’d rewrite or remove. It’s exactly as perfect/imperfect as we are, and if it fails IRL, then it does so as proof we just aren’t good enough.

Heavy.”

Alexei Berrow, Johnny Foreigner

Heavy stuff indeed. And while there’s nothing new about bands proclaiming their new record is the best thing they’ve done, a massive progression blah blah blah, the words above are different; almost threatening in fact. It’s fitting that a record entitled “Vs Everything” should be launched in such a confrontational manner, but boy does it make it hard to review it in any kind of perspective. No bland press release for Johnny Foreigner, but a heartfelt declaration that this is them going all in, and that their future as a band depends on the result. When a band says things like that, you’re going to expect a masterpiece right?

And they get so, so close. Make no doubt about it: “Vs Everything” is a very, very good album. But it’s hard to shake the feeling it could have been even better. Things start off promisingly with If I’m The Most Famous Boy You’ve Fucked, Then Honey, Yr In Trouble, whose awesome title is matched by one of the band’s best pop songs yet, and while next track With Who, Who And What I’ve Got sounded better in it’s original incarnation as a collaboration with Peach, the “Standard Rock” version here is still catchy as fuck.

It’s here that things get really good though, with Kelly taking the lead on 200x, a song which follows on from the brilliant non-album track 199x and which is even more affecting than it’s predecessor. Lex’s world weary intonation of “we just got older” is truly heart-wrenching, and the track feels like a huge leap forward. The american tour exploits of “Hulk Hoegaarden…” rush past at breakneck speed and are immediately followed by album highlight Johnny Foreigner Vs You, which sees Lex and Kelly duetting vocals over a sparse piano line. It’s easily the most beautiful song Johnny Foreigner have written yet and ends the almost flawless first act of the record.

But after the first of two musique concrete interludes we’re into the second of the records three acts, and the album hits a rocky patch. Electricity Vs The Dead and Supermorning, while both perfectly competent Johnny Foreigner songs, feel inessential on an album with a running time of close to an hour. The former, especially, sounds like the sort of thing Johnny Foreigner can do in their sleep. Indeed, the inadequacies of these two songs are thrown into sharp relief by the simply astounding Jess, You Got Yr Song, So Leave, sandwiched between the two like a diamond in the rough. New Street, You Can Take It is similarly brilliant, starting off softly and building to an anthemic close, the shout-along chorus of “you kinda always know when it’s over” finally giving way to Alexei’s plaintive “but you still carry on”.

The best is still to come though, with You Vs Everything quickly becoming my favourite Johnny Foreigner song. Featuring trombone, handclaps, an explosive chorus and some of my favourite lyrics on the album, it’s a perfect storm of everything Johnny Foreigner do best. And white next track Doesn’t Believe In Angels comes across as a pale imitation of “You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star…” standout Robert Scargill Takes The Prize, the album ends on a high with the one-two punch of The Swell/Like Neverwhere and Alternative Timelines Piling Up.

Johnny Foreigner have created a hugely ambitious record here, and while that ambition has led them to craft some of their best material yet, it’s also the source of the album’s biggest problem. At an hour long, this is an exhausting listen, and the record would benefit from losing a few of it’s less interesting tracks. Alexei’s comments before this record’s release, alongside last years excellent “You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star…” EP, gave me high expectations - but the fact is that the success of that EP lay in it’s brevity, in just how much ground it covered in six tracks. Here the band make a compelling argument for having too much of a good thing.

But let’s return to the issue of perspective, which I swore to myself I wouldn’t lose sight of (and look where that got me). This may not be Johnny Foreigner’s masterpiece - that is hopefully still to come - but it is undoubtedly their strongest collection of songs yet, a record which sees them simultaneously refining and expanding their sound and creating some of their most memorable songs yet. Sure it’s got it’s flaws, but as Alexei alludes to in that quote at the top, so have Johnny Foreigner. I still know who I’ll be backing when the chips are down. And it isn’t Everything.

8/10

Jed x