Johnny Foreigner 'Grace And The Bigger Picture' (Best Before) Released 26/10/09

Out-spoken and true to their values, Johnny Foreigner will have been pretty down-hearted when it came to tell that their second album had leaked in similar fashion to everything else they'd ever released. To empathise with a musician is probably more difficult than one would think. For them to be broken-hearted is understandable. But Johnny Foreigner need to look at it from a different perspective.

If music wasn't so widely available and if we didn't have several hundreds of access points, a band like themselves might not have reached such cult popularity with their debut EP 'Arcs Across The City' thus finding it easier to sell tickets, albums and t-shirts. This Birmingham three-piece remain relatively small news but an awful lot of people hold faith in what they do - 'Waited Up 'Til It Was Light' warrants this entirely. Their debut album kick-started a movement that has since encouraged the likes of Pulled Apart By Horses, Tubelord etc. to produce similarly inclined-music that is both exciting and popular in many quarters. Johnny Foreigner now return with some weight on their shoulders, fresh-faced from the relentless  touring circuit and somehow sounding as enthused and disheveled as a band touring for the first time.

'Grace and the Bigger Picture' prioritises values over melody, retaining the magic left over from the debut, incorporating the stories told in previous songs of cheap thrills and best friends and keeping to a not too polished form of recording. Their songs sound rougher here; 'Criminals' in particular does so in reducing the cleanliness of the band's guitar riffs and stirring things up with a more grizzly perspective. Only closer 'The Coast Was Always Clear' will remind listeners of the audacious hyperactivity that won hearts in the beginning and the fact that said closing track is the most intensely satisfying moment on the whole album tells a sorry story.

This is an album more articulate and thought-out than its predecessor, still managing to sound as if it was recorded in the space of a week-long session of gin-drinking and sexual antics. But it's almost dumbfounding to be able to scarcely find a good melody. 'Feels Like Summer' is chantable, yes, but it's also monotonous and obnoxious to point of losing its charm. The climax of 'Kingston Called, They Want Their Lost Youth Back', one of the many meaningless additions to the record, is up there with some of the most abhorrent recordings of sound of our generation, Kelly Southern swept away in a mass of squirming cries of "and they call and they call and they call", backed up by just a kick drum - inventive, it is not. It's merely detestable.

That's the thing about 'Grace and the Bigger Picture' - for every eye-opening high comes an absolute low. This is a record that mixes things that shouldn't be mixed and although it's a commendable effort, very little is pulled off.