Collaboration. It might not be at the forefront of everyone’s mind right now. As our universe moves further away from the notion of teamwork, Johnny Foreigner are staging their own type of protest. With the excellent ‘Mono No Aware’ – the band’s best work to date – set to drop on Friday 8th July, they have banded together with a selection of music magazines and blogs to reveal eight of the album’s tracks in one go. To the ever-articulate Alexei Berrow (or Lex), it’s the antithesis of our current climate. “What we’ve somehow ended up is a cross between a post-border displaced family and a really inclusive, posi clique,” he notes, as part of a statement posted in full after the track stream. (We didn’t have the heart to slice it up.)
Deliberately or not, new track ‘The Worst Of Us’ channels this message perfectly in its repeated refrain. “That’s just the worst of us,” the fuzzed out vocals chant in among dream like guitar mastery that tells the tale of both mutual destruction and reliance. No matter how bad these things get, we’re all better together. “Drop out when you want to, I’m convinced I need you,” Kelly Southern semi-pleads.
It’s a message that spreads into their self-classification. Lex ponders their place in punk, the classifications and restrictions placed on art. “People laugh at us when we tell them we’re punk,” he states. “We don’t got the aesthetic stylings or the harsh distortions… What we do got, is an ethos, a belief in those ideals and the community and culture that’s rooted round them.”
And that’s what matters. ‘The Worst Of Us’, as well as all of ‘Mono No Aware’, is a celebration of togetherness and freedom, and how one links directly to the other. It just helps that it’s all encompassed in an exceptional musical package in equal parts whimsical and hard-hitting, and always distinctively progressive.
‘Mono No Aware’ will be available from the 8th July via Alcopop! Records. Read the full statement from Lex and see the excellent track artwork by Lewes Herriot and Irene Zafra following the exclusive stream of ‘The Worst Of Us’.
Hello there friends. Wow, what an honour. Firstly I wanna thank the gods, our label, and the team at Punktastic. I mean, what even is punk, right? Cos people laugh at us when we tell them we’re punk. We don’t got the aesthetic stylings or the harsh distortions. We don’t have the doctrine of the NEVER SELL OUT-old guard, or the £meetandgreet punch of the POST “SELLING OUT” wave. What we do got, is an ethos, a belief in those ideals and the community and culture that’s rooted round them. Real punks don’t get to chose. (shuffles notes) Um, they tell me this has never been done before. That yr supposed to pick the one site, give them the whole record. That what we’re doing here is whimsical, goddamn impractical, and The Fans need convenient herding to the one big billboard.
They say alla this like we don’t have a glorious history of doing -impractical. We can’t even say “The Fans” without either cringing or pretending we’re writing a terrible Oscar acceptance speech. What we’ve somehow ended up is a cross between a post-border displaced family and a really inclusive, posi clique. This spreading interjection of exclusives seems like a natural (and more fun) way to deliver our new works and it’s beyond thunderdome that everyone participating gets that, and has offered us this chance.
The 8 sites we’ve conspired with to do this, they don’t just support our band. They rep for our friends’ bands, your friends’ bands, maybe your band. Our new album is almost here and we’re so fucking proud of it. But also, proud to still be part of this mad interwoven tapestry/collage of brave and inspiring humans creating, chronicling, and soundtracking our lives in a time when the rest of the country wishes it could be this united and positive.
The Worst Of Us
Music by Johnny Foreigner
Artwork by Lewes Herriot and Irene Zafra
