“I have nothing against people being stylish - it’s just when style tends to overtake content we don’t like it. Most of the people, in fact no, all of the people we’ve ever met – boys who wear pointy shoes – have at some point fucked us over and been thoroughly untrustworthy. So it’s a dead give away for us.”

No shit, Johnny Foreigner’s lead singer Alexei Berrow is actually being completely serious. And I’m not sure that I disagree. I’m not quite so passionate as he is, sure, but recreational smart shoes – unless particularly flamboyant or ‘ironic’ (paired with Bermuda shorts perhaps) – really should be done away with by now.

“I’m sure there are some nice people in pointy shoes,’ he continues. “We just haven’t met them. We did in America but I don’t think that counts. And in Japan the kids like pointy shoes. But it’s a different culture. It’s mostly an English thing. Basically we won’t trust them.”

All sounds perfectly logical. The Birmingham band - Berrow, Kelly Southern and Junior Elvis Washington - recently played on The Fly Tour, which was “awesome”. They played with TubeLord who they’ve known a while and Joe from the band came onstage to play guitar with them at the end of their sets. And Danananakroyd who are “like our favourite band ever. But they’re a million times a better live band than we could ever be so we got to watch them every night.” Sounds like it was all love and harmony. “It was really good. Everything went so smoothly.” I suspect that the organisers probably kept the pointies and the casuals firmly segregated.

Johnny Foreigner are currently on a UK Tour, which they’re pretty pleased about as they got to pick most of their support bands. Scottish “scary punk” act Jesus H Foxx and London-based William get name-checked as favourites.
Jo-Fo also played Latitude earlier in the summer, but as it was the beginning of their summer circuit the band didn’t really know what to expect until the crowd began singing one of their own intros to them.

“It brought home how many people had brought the album and took it to heart,” says Berrow. “Yeah I felt really emotional. It’s a bit egocentric I know to have loved your own set but it was cool.”

Their debut album Waited Up ‘Til it Was Light did indeed receive rave reviews, enjoying a widespread dollop of uber-hyping before its release. “Yeah that was surreal and unexpected but great of course - we aren’t complaining! It was quite funny, people were trying to guess the track listing before the release - that was really weird. No one was that close though.”

They recorded the album in New Jersey with producer Machine who is normally associated with more rock-based acts.
“We have our hearts set on going back to Machine for our next recording. That style of production – loud, heavier rock - just suited us really well. We’re definitely looking forward to going back. People think of us as being more lo-fi but that’s really just because we didn’t have access to equipment to do anything else.”

The band stayed in New York, right by Times Square, and had quite a pleasant commute to work. Berrow gets excited when recalling seeing the tunnel they used in Die Hard and taking pictures in the tunnel at Times Square Garden where they filmed the bit from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York when Macaulay Culkin gets chased by the crazy pigeon lady.

“The Mae Shi are probably our favourite to have toured with. It’s hard to describe their sound, they use a lot of technological stuff like looped drums and things but they’re the most fun band ever during their performances. They have this big white sheet that they cast over the audience. I think it’s one of those things that you have to be there to get. And they always have people up on stage with them. They were so cool and it didn’t take long to break the ice - we were swapping mix CDs with them after the first night.”

Berrow and Southern have been in bands “like forever”. Influences are listed as quite literally everything from Akon to Squarepusher to Modest Mouse, and “anyone you’ve ever met, ever”.

“We started a band knowing it was just for our own enjoyment. As a child I was always quite obsessed with Queen – I still have a scary encyclopaedic knowledge - but no one wants to listen to people making music who are into in Cap N’ Jazz and Broken Social Scene in Birmingham. It’s very kind of ‘traditional’.”

He avoids slagging off local bands like The Twang or Editors as he doesn’t like to be negative about other people’s music… “But I dislike predictability and bands that attempt to rip off those kinds of acts pretty much sum up the Birmingham music scene, and if anything it just encouraged us to get out.”

Are you moving to London then?

“It’s really practical to still live in Birmingham especially for touring and stuff,” he says. “We’ll pass home on the way to places, you get to stay in your own bed for just one night and wake up and drive somewhere else. But as we make more and more friends in London you get to spend less time with your friends in Birmingham so it’s a bit weird.”

So for now they’re staying put. Plus while they do not have a favourite haunt in London they do most def have a least favourite haunt in Proud Galleries. An unfortunate series of disgruntling incidents while playing there means that they are not eager to return.

“People had bought tickets to come and see us play and they tried to get out of paying us,” says Berrow. Coupled with having no rider and getting their encore shot down by the house DJ. They are not exactly eager to return.
So do you hate being asked about Road To V? (The band competed in the ‘new talent’ show last year.)

“Haha I was just talking to Kelly about this today, in the first interview she did the guy was like ‘so you’re the Road To V band’. We don’t hate it, I mean we did do it so we knew it would be something that people would talk about. It’s just that so much has happened since it’s a bit weird that people still dredge it up. But even the most annoying, mundane question is asked by someone doing you a favour and getting your band more publicity. So you can ask about it.”