There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment for young indie bands in the UK to feature male and female vocals,
and squawk. See: Los Campesinos. Johnny Foreigner are in a similar vein. Young, free wheeling, spiky indie that
ultimately passes me by. The music is bubbly and infectious, and suitably youthful, and perhaps that is where it
fails to sit well with me. I am just too old. Then again, I can still appreciate the great, poppy mid west emo of
the 90s that this band clearly takes a certain amount of ideas from, so who knows?
The songs bring to mind different bands at different times – initially it sounds like a fully instrumented up Mates
of State. And then “Our Bipolar Friends” brazenly pilfers several Braid riffs, which I am all in favour of. It has
to be said though that Nanna and Broach is a gigantically superior vocal combo to Berrow and Southern. Nanna and
Broach never sounded forced, whilst this pair leave me with a nagging sense that they are trying too hard. Less
squawking, a little more consideration and things would be substantially better. Because I do enjoy the
instrumentation, they wring out seriously good melodies that will certainly lodge in the memory given enough
exposure. Particularly enjoyable is the riotous start of “Cranes and Cranes and Cranes and Cranes”, although it
loses it’s way by slowing down and employing misjudged hand claps (observe “Second Place” by the Get Up Kids for
assistance with correcting this issue, JF) and more annoying vocal parts. The dynamic bits they nicked out of
midwestmo are a total blast though. The relentless piling on from song after song does tend to grate and wear after
a while, the moments when they try and ease off are generally mangled and irritating, so you don’t really get a
chance to recover. There are far too many times when they sound like Mates of State at treble speed, when really
they need to put the brakes on just for a second. SLOW DOWN! YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE AN ASTHMA ATTACK! They do throw in an acoustic song, but it’s dire and exposes the weakness of the male vocals completely.
Much like Los Campesinos, the energy and thrills of this band are contained in their ability to craft a good,
ramshackle tune. There is so much energy contained in this record that you could probably use it to power a small
coastal village. Unfortunately, again like Los Campesinos, their problems are the vocals and their apparent
desperation to sound like they mean it, which ultimately just causes hardened old bastards like myself to raise an
eyebrow. For whippersnappers only.