Keeping Some Dark Secrets

Until the unfortunate leak of the Dinosaur Jr. record this week, the newest music we were most excited about was from Birmingham, England trio Johnny Foreigner. Equal parts Built To Spill circa the gritty The Normal Years and energetic contemporary UK post-punk such as The Rakes, Johnny Foreigner crafts electrifying tunes that feel compact and sprawling at the same time. There are four tracks at the band’s MySpace berth, and you can download all of them, which we highly recommend doing despite the fact that the tracks are ripped at a woefully low bitrate. We’ve swapped some emails with a fellow representing the band who hopes to get us some better-quality files, which we’ll post if permitted. Currently Johnny Foreigner has but one single under its belt, but a new split single is to be issued next month on Sheffield-based Laundrette, complete with handmade 3-D artwork and 3-D glasses. In the meantime, the band is touring throughout the UK, and the dates are posted at MySpace. Check out these downloads below to hear what everyone else will be buzzing about several months from now. Well, it looks like you can no longer hotlink to MP3s at MySpace, which we guess is perfectly understandable, so just hit the links above and go get the files yerself.

[Update: OK, we're now fully obsessed with Johnny Foreigner. We just poked around and you can download five MP3s at their web site, and two MP3 samples of their first single "Sometimes In The Bullring"/"Camp Kelly Calm" (released in October) from the Laundrette site here -- and for those of you keeping score at home, yes, "Sometimes In the Bullring" does appear to be the same song as "Yes! You Talk Too Much" [oops, we think we mislabeled some files -- those songs are absofrably not the same song, we even had confirmation from the band]. OK, now we really should do something more productive with our Saturday than go deeper down the rabbit hole of fanaticism for this band… at least for now. But would a U.S. label please sign these guys ASAP?]

[UPDATE 2: We can't stop listening. We can't. Figures, as the band mentions Meneguar in their bio. They may be the only ones who like Meneguar more than we do.]

Filed under: Johnny Foreigner by Jay