The Chorus Music Club Society • Page 418

Me and @Michael Schmidt have agreed on our trade. I will listen to John Moreland - High on Tulsa Heat and he will listen to Alice Merton - Mint +4.

 

@Kiana and I have agreed. I will listen to Ramona - Deals, Deals, Deals and they will listen to The Xcerts - Hold On To Your Heart.

Here we go!

 

That Ramona record is really really good. That’s a good get.

 

Looking forward to it!

 

I’m glad to see Hold On To Your Heart is still making the rounds in here, I bloody love The Xcerts.

I’ve not heard the Ramona album so I might have to check that out myself.

 

I was pleasantly surprised by that Xcerts album. Really, really good!

 

That album is fantastic! I still listen to it.

 

Did you ever go in on their earlier stuff? There Is Only You is probably my favourite of theirs (HOTYH is a close 2nd).

 

I did not but I will!

Edit: Just listened. Another great record by the band.

 

There Is Only You is like a landmark UK pop rock album of this decade to me. Even the bsides are excellent. Underrated band.

Happy to participate again! I already have a few albums in mind that I want to recommend to chorus.fm peeps.

In the coming weeks, I'm also going to listen to the Moneen and Creeper albums that were given to me last year, and write the reviews they deserved.

 

I will do my rec I exchanged for the recent pairings but I should probably be taken off the list for future pairings. Sry things are just intense rn and idk how I'll available I'll be

 

Johnny Foreigner – You Can Do Better



Johnny Foreigner were a Birmingham based emo/punk band, who formed in 2005. They slowly gained steam within the UK scene by released a constant stream of EP’s, and You Can Do Better is their fourth professional album, released by UK based label Alcopop!, and later by the US Philadelphia-based label Lame-O. It was their first album featuring second guitarist Lewes Herriot, and was their penultimate release, coming in 2014.

Despite them being part of the UK scene for 10 years, I’ll confess to not having heard of this band before. This is perhaps more surprising given that I lived in Birmingham from 2012 to 2016, and regularly attended concerts in the city both before and after this. With no expectations, I had absolutely no idea what to expect.

Opening with a one-two of “Shipping” and “Le Sigh”, you are immediately barraged by the pace of this album. Overdriven guitars and furious drumming keep this album going for most of the 40 minute runtime, but I often found myself leaning more towards their slower, more reflective moments. I’m not stranger to fast paced pop punk or emo albums, and this is clearly a band hugely influenced by bands like early Tigers Jaw, but I often wished they had lowered the pace just a little and let the songs breathe.

A touch I personally enjoyed was the overwhelming sense of locality in the songs. Similar to how the current Philadelphia scene featuring bands like The Wonder Years, Grayscale, Tigers Jaw and Modern Baseball really shout about their city, Johnny Foreigner do the same with both Birmingham, and Britain as a country. “Le Sigh” features lines where they talk of the areas party drug culture, and later reference a popular Birmingham nightclub, Snobs.

The album shows great variety throughout. “Riff Glitchard” is a nice touch, with the first half reminding of an instrumental that Turnover might write, whilst “Wifi Beach” is a relaxed and charming call and response song from singer/guitarist Alexei, and singer/bassist Kelly.

I was casually enjoying the record when I got to song eight, “To The Death”, a song that grabbed me immediately. The song is a haunting ode to a passed away friend, who seemingly was lost to suicide, and deals with the feelings left behind by the band and their friends. Alexei sings the first verse, opening with the words “I need a spell to stop my friends from feeling guilty every time they talk about you. How every sentence led to the last words that they might have said, it's like I've lost a part of them too, so I talk to you.” Verse two is sung by Kelly, and the song has a nice feel of having two sides of the same story. There are passages featuring some great twinkly guitars and a stunning atmosphere, although again I felt the chorus could do with a little less pace and some more refinement to allow the emotion to show. It ends on a simple lyrics, but a strong one. “If you could see the mess you'd leave, would you?”

Closer “Devestator” features a hidden acoustic ballad where Alexei and Kelly harmonise well, singing about death and difficult times, before erupting into a big band number that feels heavily cathartic.

Overall I would say that You Can Do Better is a good release with lots of catchy songs, but I sometimes felt that some decisions perhaps made it less immediate than it could have been and perhaps this harmed how successful the band could be. An enjoyable release by a band I will probably check out more in the coming weeks.

RIYL: Tigers Jaw, Martha
7/10

 

Thanks to @ugman_2000 for a cool recommendation that was pretty enjoyable and interesting and actually brought back memories of somewhere I used to live!

 

Awesome review @SamLevi11 I'm glad you enjoyed it, I had no idea you had ties to Birmingham so that's a cool coincidence. Yeah it's not a perfect album but it's one I enjoy a lot, whenever I listen to it reminds me of 5 years ago when I used to be more in touch with the uk scene around that time. I was thinking all week good I hope Sam likes this one because I immediately regretted not picking a Thursday album haha.


Seeing as you liked the more mellow moments of this one it might be worth going back to their albums either side of this one Johnny Foreigner vs Everything or Mono No Aware if you ever get the time as they had more of that side to it. If you want more immediate JF though Grace and The Bigger Picture is a good place to go next. My favourite album of theirs is annoyingly not on streaming services (Their debut Waited Up Til It Was Light) otherwise I would've recommended that one haha.

 

Great review!

 

Totally understandable and I hope it all works out.

 

You can choose Thursday next time as all I know is the song Cross Out The Eyes aha.

It's a good album, I sometimes felt like they were intentionally being a little obtuse which at first made it harder to latch onto, but I think becomes an endearing factor. I also liked the male/female vocal dynamic. It was like it WATIC weren't terrible in that respect.

I think I'll check out the album before, see what they sounded like as a three piece out of curiosity.

 

I really enjoyed the male/female vocals. @ugman_2000 and I were talking about the album and he informed me that the frontman went on to form itoldyouiwouldeatyou

 

Not quite form haha, he's just one of their guitarists. They were already a band when he joined them, he has been with them for a few years now though.

 

I stand corrected!

 

Someone recommend an album. Bored at work. Nothing too heavy or hard to get into though cause, as I said, i'm at work.

 

Wolves Like Us: Brittle Bones

 

This is totally not what I expected it to be haha!

 

In a good or a bad way?

 

OH not in either way, just the band name and artwork didn't say to me metaly punk stuff to me, I don't know why. Album is decent but when I turned it on it just took me by surprise haha