Keeping Some Dark Secrets

We thought today we’d bring you two tracks fromWeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow, as you’ve already heard one of them if you’ve followed our sage advice and logged on to hear the tracks streaming at this ghosted MySpace outpost. So “Caution! Vampires!” will not be new to you, but we expect the track that emerges from it on Johnny Foreigner’s “lost” first album — that is, “An Apology” — will be (unless you are one of the 40 people lucky enough to own one of the hyperlimited copies ofWeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow). We described the former track here as “not dissimilar to many of the lesser known tracks populating the very rewarding demos collection I Like You Mostly Late At Never, with spirals of arpeggiated guitar, buried noise and spoken-word samples and even a bit of synth cropping up throughout underneath Mr. Berrow’s now-familiar rant and croon.” The tune opens with a noise loop before tumbling into a swaying verse. The production on the drums is distant, but otherwise “Caution! Vampires!’ is recorded well and boasts a gripping arrangement of guitars and airy backing vocals.

At a minute-forty-five seconds band fronter Alexei Berrow intensifies the tone of the song with an aggressive guitar figure that ultimately transforms into a dense crescendo driven by cymbals to the brink. “Caution! Vampires!” closes with some drunken(-sounding) ranting that lays the groundwork for a neat seque into the quiet, solemn opening of the terrifically affecting “An Apology.” Berrow’s barrage of lyrics here is buried within a mix laden with high, spacey synths, acoustic guitar and a curtain of what sounds like accordion/concertina. Drumming at the end of the third minute lifts the entire proceedings to another plane entirely, from elegy to strident head-bobber. Again, the production is imaginative and clever, but ultimately falls short of clear, making “An Apology” among the first tracks from WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow that we’d implore Johnny Foreigner to re-record in a proper studio. Both “Caution! Vampires!” and “An Apology” are posted below. We’ll continue exploring WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow in future blog posts, so keep reading.

Johnny Foreigner — “Caution! Vampires!” — WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
Johnny Foreigner — “An Apology” — WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
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[buy in-print Johnny Foreigner music here and here]

Filed under: Johnny Foreigner by Jay