“We were convinced that Scotland didn’t like us,” Alexi of Johnny Foreigner intones in his sanded Brummie drawl. “Well,” he concedes quickly “certain parts of Scotland”. A reference to the disappointing turn outs at the previous two nights’ shows north of the border. But failure of the money paying public to show is no indication of talent – the Sex Pistols’ first shows were notoriously unattended, the Velvets’ albums criminally undersold. In both cases though the sphere of influence was vast.
Now before the hyperbole machine breaks into, you know, a thousand million pieces it’s best to make clear that Johnny Foreigner are not quite the finished article. Not quite on shoulder nudging territory yet. Judging by tonight though, he writes pen a-tremble (pen? – disbelief suspended) it could, just could, be only a matter of time. Their set tonight is incendiary, accomplished, shambolic and poetic.
Henry’s Cellar Bar is simply that, slung beneath the dull neon ambience of chain pubs, sunk beneath January’s great grey promontory; a seemingly omnipresent drizzle and fug turning stale on fleck-marked pavements. Below this, all of this, in our subterranean venue we begin.
It’s loud, cataclysmically so, the songs spreading volatile wings beyond even what was hinted on the Arcs Across the City EP. It is by turns glitchy and thunderous. Without looking I can tell the feet behind me are on point. Tottering and neckstraining in near crush to get a closer look at this melee. ‘Champagne Girls I Have Known’ and ‘The End and Everything After’ open proceedings, or so I am reliably informed. In reality I’m too confused to make much sense of what is happening, The razor wire guitar cedes to the actual, actual scream of female vocals and then the drums. Drums like a kit falling down endless staircases with the rhythmic ill-fated tick of Guildenstein’s coin, the miss and flight filled by feedback, howl and thud. They belie the physical nature of the venue, a truncated room with sunken ceiling, to become a cavernous call to arms.
After exerting every dizzying metronomical muscle for ‘Cranes and Cranes and Cranes and Cranes’we are offered an almost breather as they cover ‘Grounded’. And it makes sense. It truly does. At last we can see the take off points for Johnny Foreigner and in the distance the horizons we will be taken by the hand and led to. Sometime later, I’m not sure when; my inner clock broken, Alexi will start a five note refrain from another song. Eager to impress I feel compelled to shout out, but its name won’t arrive at my lips. The moment passes and we pinwheel elsewhere. Yet later still I realise it was the Super Mario theme.
Set closer ‘Yr All Just Jealous!’ is jaw dropping stuff; the disparate and desperate elements of the band carcrashing together in soft reverent violence. A 7 minute 3D slow motion technicolour replay of every explosion, flatten and smash.
That feeling you get, that thought. The one you’ll be so posessed with. You’ll reach out to invisible distances be it with friend or stranger. During parties; mid conversation, family gathering or night-time explorations. Staring mid-room to say finally, all too quickly, as a song plays in the background: “I love this bit”.
All their songs are like that. All the time.
The distances, the echoes, the spaces and the fills: clanging death rattle empty spasmodic nitro-glycerine cleaved joy and snarl. It’s incadescently brutal and dangerously quiet.
I hear the drumming in my head for a long time after. Until I realise it’s not the drumming at all, but the beat of my heart. And I am excited about music finally; again.