Stereoboard Speak To Johnny Foreigner About The New Record, Making Music, Girls & Travel (Interview)
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Written by Rachel Preece
2011 sees Johnny Foreigner release a new album, their first full-length record since 2009. The Birmingham trio’s rambunctious third album is a prodigious eighteen songs long. Stereoboard's Rachel Preece caught up with lead vocalist/guitarist Alexei Berrow to talk about the new record, making music in England’s second city, girls, moaning and travel.
New album Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything was recorded with Dom James, from Birmingham band Sunset Cinema Club. You’ve stated that working with Dom allowed you to have much control over recording (compared to recording in swanky New York recording studios) – is this your most personal album yet?
In the sense that there was no adult to say, “oh, you probably shouldn't put that there”, then yes totally. We always try, by sheer bloody-minded principle, to ignore the adults when we're making a record, but this time we literally didn’t speak to anyone until the mixes started coming in. This is the album we wanted to make on every level, and I don't think we could have done it if it weren't for having a producer who grew up in the same scene as us; listening to the same records and hanging out together - or if we'd had the baggage that doing it in a more moneyed-up scenario would entail. We've been friends with Dom for longer than we've been a band, and he's been recording us for a long time, so it was a pretty natural choice.
In terms of lyrical content though, I’d say Grace – our last full length album - was more personal, probably to the point of being self-obsessed. I love it, to me it’s like an aural photo album of a mentally hectic year, but it's about us - me and our band and girls I met while in the band and literally nothing else. I think maybe more people will relate to this record as it seems personal to them, if that makes sense. There's less “being in a band is emotionally draining, man”. It’s still there -girls and moaning and travel are all big parts of my life, but I used a fair bit of dramatic license and consciously checked myself not to write us into the plot too much. I've been in an awesome relationship for the last two years, and I don't want to cheapen it by smearing it over pop songs. So that’s a whole chunk of personal experience and emotions that I’m really wary of drawing on, at least directly. if Grace was about what happened to us in 2008, Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything is about what happened to us and all our friends and people we know from 2009 to now..
What are the themes of the new album?
The alternate universe theory; for every decision you make, there exists a world where you made the opposite. There's also internal monologue in the merits of experiencing stuff versus capturing it for posterity. There’s some meta-fiction. The overall story is the world’s only happy shipwreck, where, instead of drowning, everyone gains the power of flight.
At the same time the ship sinks, I'm on a beach with someone else’s girlfriend. Melodrama ensues. There’s tangentially related things, and there's stuff that’s like painted scenery; background information. Understanding how you can only truly see the bigger picture by accepting you'll never see the bigger picture. It all works out in the end, i think. There’ll be a map included in the artwork. Finally, it’s about girls, moaning and travel.
It’s a long album – why the eighteen songs?
To start with, we're just that sort of band; we grew up on American indie/college rock, and those scenes don’t really have the attitude that albums should be of a certain curtailed length. I guess that’s an American peculiarity; value for money, and, in a lot of cases, quantity over quality. For once, we didn’t have time limits or studio restrictions, so we weren't in a position where the more songs we started, the more we'd have to compromise quality across the board. This is a probably badly remembered Kevin Drew quote, but, we didn't know when we'd next be in a position to do something this grand, so we'd be foolish not to take advantage. We're well stocked for B-sides too..
We're still expressive and (relatively) young people with stuff to say, and we'd always rather regret being OTT than regret not trying it. We write all the time, those tracks were paired down from probably triple the amount rattling through my head.
The record is split into 3 separate parts for those that like a clearly pre-defined and manageable listening experience, and because we like a bit of pretension. As sad as it is, that’s a dying culture thanks to all the wonderful leaps of technology that mean hearing someone else is a finger click away.
Your last full-length album was Grace and the Bigger Picture in 2009 – how has your sound developed since then?
Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything is definitely more sonically varied than Grace, but it's always hard to judge the storm when you are sat in the eye. I’d like to think we've learned how to be bigger, smaller, more organic, less organic, faster and slower. Taking all the musical cues and sounds that excite us and mixing them into us. To me, that’s the point of being a professional musician; I don't want to learn how to crystallize our sound, I want to expand and figure out how to make it more or less, and use different palettes and absorb new techniques. It's not really for us to say but hopefully we've achieved that. At the very least we've convinced ourselves.
You tend to reference your home city in your songs, are you proud of Birmingham’s musical background? Which Birmingham bands are you listening to at the moment?
I talk about Brum as it's what I know best. I'd much rather (and totally try to) set songs somewhere more glamorous. I don't really get the pride. It’s not like bands are gestalt entities like football teams, working for city pride.
Where you’re born and who your family is, is pure chance and it seems weird to my cold logical brain that you could be proud of something that you had nothing to do with. Also everyone, Sabbath and Duran included, did this to get away from the city; it’s not like say, The Smith’s and Oasis' relationship with Manchester.
Birmingham is not a city that learns from its mistakes and successive governing bodies have done their best to shut down any semblances of musical community or scene. Simply put, our council put too much money into the Bullring and central redevelopment. They think it makes more financial sense to pitch the city to the upwardly mobile c***s who buy flats in converted warehouses in the centre and then complain about the noise from the party next door, than it does to encourage that party and let it grow into something that could be a revenue stream, or a cultural asset, or anything that isn't some piss-poor retro lad rock band that the rest of the world pisses themselves laughing at.
As for bands - there seems to be a constant ebb and flow of local bands as talented people start playing and then give it up. Luckily you asked us at a peak - Ace Bushy Striptease (structurally challenged perfect guitar pop songs) and Pandas and People are probably the best place to start.
You’ve previously cited MySpace as being the main reason you became successful in the first place – your label and manager picked you up there – do you think that Internet is still the most important platform for a small band to gain exposure? Or was that something that was big four years ago?
Sadly, I think it’s still important. Band camp does what MySpace did for music so much better, and obviously Facebook has eclipsed it, but at that time, it was the perfect integration of exciting new social networking and a crappy local band. It put your band on the same site as every other band in the world and gave everyone equal marketing/ promotional powers. What ruined MySpace was the amount of botspam; greedy companies and lazy musicians that didn't get the fact that it worked as well as it was a direct honest link between you and your target demographic.
We're turning our MySpace Japanese, because they're the only folks who use it to any significant practical extent. So i guess it's still useful, but it doesn't have the reach (and thus potential power) that it used to.
Are you planning to tour with the album soon?
This is the first release we've had in three territories simultaneously, so we're planning a couple of big party shows before an actual tour in the UK, and we'll go back to Europe before the year is out. We should be going to Japan in December too, which is super-exciting.
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Your last full-length album was Grace and the Bigger Picture in 2009 – how has your sound developed since then?
