Johnny Foreigner / Dananananaykroyd – The Charlotte, Leicester 01/09/08

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Photos by Lucy Johnston. Taken in London 30/09/08

What the Charlotte, a grand old stopover on the touring circuit, lacks in glamour it makes up for in atmosphere when a band come to town who demand fervency, and tonight is most definitely one of those nights. The 390 capacity venue may be looking about a third full at best, but following fine support sets from Loughborough’s wirily intense Love Ends Disaster! and the pounding electro dance-math – when they aren’t having technical breakdowns, which tonight is during every song – of fast rising (their forthcoming debut EP was produced by Forward Russia’s Tom Woodhead) Minnaars a hardcore form down the front expecting to cut loose.

Dananananaykroyd promptly give them plenty of reason to do so. The Glaswegians’ double drummer set-up and self description as “fight-pop” gives some indication of their pummelling properties, but without seeing them live that’s only a fraction of the story. Beginning with an all-action version of new single ‘Pink Sabbath’ it’s immediately apparent why there’s such a fuss being made in these circles – cryptic lyrics often shouted over riffs that ping-pong all over the shop without the need for compromise, encased in song structures that twist, turn and career all over the place without losing the thread. You can’t pin them down to one genre – sometimes Sonic Youth/At The Drive-In messy distortion, sometimes Q And Not U hardcore dance-math-punk, sometimes handclaps and counter-melodies straight out of some sort of lo-fi indie valhalla. And then there’s the stagecraft. Well, I say stage, but Callum Gunn doesn’t like to commit himself to it for too long, often jumping into the throng closely followed by sometime second drummer John Baillie Jnr, both flinging themselves around and indulging in long range vocal swapping a la Blood Brothers, Gunn at one stage merely leaving the mike behind to run literal rings round the audience before joining the pit, while during an epic ‘Some Dresses’ the pair split the punters down the middle and attempt to organise a ‘wall of cuddles’. And where they lead in further exploration, eventually guitarists David Roy and Duncan Robertson follow. They’re a gloriously chaotic experience, energy to spare and forcing people to pay attention to their way of doing things. Frankly, woe betide any band that follows.

Which isn’t to say Johnny Foreigner aren’t going to try, although Alexei Berrow seems mightily pissed off with some unspecified electrical problem that means they start some forty minutes late. Their still pretty much underground but sizeable for that following has come about thanks to the way the Birmingham trio seem to indiscriminately fire off these compacted nuggets of jerky, unstable buzzsaw indie-pop so the whole is even more than the sum of some impressive on their own parts – Berrow’s unconventional guitar wizardry, Junior Laidley’s driving drumming (and ability to play keyboard and drums simultaneously) and Kelly Southern holding down both the bass and her end of the call and response vocals. There’s three new songs in the truncated set, all seeming punchier and meatier than the well worn material on Waited Up Til It Was Light, but it’s what passes for JoFo’s hits that work an already fired up pit into a frenzy, knocking Kelly’s mike over on one occasion – ‘Eyes Wide Terrified’ in particular belies any tour tiredness that this forever on the road band may have accrued. Two thirds of Dananananaykroyd add a virtually white noise coda to the final song, so new not even Southern can remember what it’s called, as Berrow ends up being carried offstage and aloft. A triumph over adversity all round, then, but it’s the unstoppable Scots who win the night on points.

Dananananaykroyd on MySpace
Johnny Foreigner on Myspace