Johnny Foreigner Return With Forwards!, a New Release via Alcopop! Records on 4th September
Shares new single “The New Navigation”
Announce Headline Tour for September
FORWARDS! is a collection of songs by Johnny Foreigner about their hometown and how they really feel about it. For almost twenty years, Birmingham indie-rock 4 piece have occupied a unique corner of UK alternative music, and today they announce a brand new LP, or what they are calling a “Small Collection of Songs,” due 4th September via Alcopop! Records. The record includes 10 full length tracks, ‘6 actual songs’, each named from prominent bits of Birmingham media, and ‘4 cursed field recordings’.
They also share the first single “The New Navigation”; which steals its name from an 18th century folk song called Birmingham Lads (The New Navigation) about the city’s new waterways making Birmingham a desirable place to live. But guitarist Alexei Berrow explains “our version is about the 1945 Distribution of Industry act that deliberately choked Bham’s expansion, and the current “ “managed bankruptcy” that’s cutting services, selling assets, and pushing folks out of the city.”
It’s a seriously incredible skill that this band can capture the same magic as their first debut, so far into their immense musical career. From the immediate guitar tone and call to action panning, the cymbal smashes to the shouty vocals, you know immediately this is Johnny Foreigner!
Forwards! moves roughly chronologically through moments in Brummie history; from the Lunar Society/Priestley Riots, through post war brutalist redevelopment, to the current era of apathy, strikes, mystery fires, and grifters stoking dangerously misguided “patriotism”. The record grew from the band’s view of the city as both a microcosm of the wider country, and testing ground for 200 years of unaccountable Westminster experimentation. The title itself is taken from the Birmingham’s oft-derided civic motto.
Throughout the record, fellow Birmingham punx Luxury Nan Smell take the role of The City Elders, providing backing vocals that interrupt, question or comment on the songs like a running director’s commentary. Meanwhile, Bryn Bowen, whose CV stretches across numerous Birmingham bands of the 2000s, appears as The Lords of Change, a recurring voice embodying the landlords, lawmakers and civic powerbrokers who shape the city from above.
Johnny Foreigner Statement
Hello The Press. We are Johnny Foreigner, a not-completely-unsuccessful late 00s indie rock band that made 5 albums about girls, drinking, and local architecture, before growing up and getting proper jobs. You folks (or more likely, your predecessors) grew into calling us a cult band, which is a kind way of explaining how our sales figures never quite matched up to our review scores; tho we are quietly proud with the lil niche we carved in our scene. In 2022 we reunited to release How To Be Hopeful, a record of chaos magic and coincidence and the giddying feeling of falling in actual real massive love and everything being alright forever. It was supposed to be a joyous coda.
As always, our timing sucked. Between social unrest and inequality, fearmongering and facism, the sickening genocide on our screens and the collective internal realisation that all the politicians and leaders our media allows to flourish will sell us out in a heartbeat, everything suddenly does not feel alright forever.
We are not equipped to deal with this. We are a group of old getting older friends who like to write catchy relatable pop songs with gnarly guitars. So we have retreated into the past and written about what we know; and what we know more than anything, is our dear hometown.
This is a small collection of songs about Birmingham and Birmingham history. It’s a record of where we came from and why we are like this. A record that comprises 6 actual songs, each named from prominent bits of Brummagem media, and 4 field recordings from various points in the timeline from there to here. A record of how parliament and press stoked division and invoked ‘patriotism’ to burn the foreigners out of town. A record of how our nominally progressive Labour council was useless, controlled and corrupted, and bankrupted our city, and of how we were once quietly proud of our ingenuity, tolerance, and hope for the future… and now we are..not. Yam alright, bab? Complaining is the one thing real Brummies remain exceptional at, but mayhaps this ay -just- a Birmingham record.
As ever this seems like both a dumb move in terms of Furthering Our Career/Increasing Our Demographic, and absolutely the right thing for Our Band Johnny Foreigner to do. And as ever, we are super proud of what we’ve made, but being from Birmingham we pathologically cannot admit that out loud.
Alexei /Junior / Kelly / Lewes sleep to the sound of hammers, July 2026
Tour Dates
3 September, Nottingham, JT Soar
4 September, London, The Social
6 September, Southampton, The Joiners
7 September, Bristol, The Exchange
8 September, Norwich, Dead Wax
9 September, Sheffield, Yellow Arch Studios *
10 September, Brummagem, Hare and Hounds
13 September, Manchester, Yes
17 September, Kingston, The Fighting Cocks *
All shows except* feature Victor Villarreal (Cap’n Jazz/Owls/Ghosts and Vodka + more) as main support. Local openers tba.
https://www.johnnyforeignertheband.com
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