Johnny Boy - Johnny Boy

  by Sarah Maybank

published: 28 / 6 / 2007

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Review

We’ll forgive you Johnny Boy. That tale about James Dean Bradfield offering to produce you after 'happening' across your studio... well we haven’t felt so set up since Jack and Meg rang up to insist they really, really, really were siblings. But hey – so what if the back story’s a bit more Grimm’s fairy tale than Newsnight special? The important bit is that Johnny Boy unleash euphoric, soaring Spector-pop of such joyous beauty humanity moves closer to world peace every single time this album gets played. Davo and Lolly hurl themselves through puppy dog-charming Go-Team-esque chantalongs, bedecked in goose-bumpingly agit-prop titles (‘You Are The Generation Who Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve’: pure genius.), and fizzing with parping, cityscape sounds and cheeky Public Enemy and Sex Pistols riffs. And that voice. Lolly emotes with the death or glory passion of Battle of Stalingrad Russians, something that’s almost impossible for more earthbound folk to pull off without sounding like an over-excitable karaoke singer doing their best Mariah Carey. Or, even worse, Carey herself. Every good thing has its downside of course and anything that burns with Johnny Boy’s intensity will end up using all the oxygen in the room so you may end up having to listen to this in breathing equipment. You’ll cope.

Track Listing:-

1 You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve
2 Wall Street
3 Fifteen Minutes
4 Livin' In The City
5 War On Want
6 Springer
7 All Exits Final
8 Formaldehyde (Last Words Of Lottery Loser)
9 Bonnie Parker's 115th Dream
10 Johnny Boy Theme