Johnny Boy

Johnny Boy place their hearts and beliefs on hissing black vinyl, with coyly-put lyrics about todays material obsessions. On the street and in the clubs, its not who you are, but how many designer shoes you own... Extending that idea to the music business, its no longer about the record itself. The stuff that comes out of your speakers is no longer deemed as important as who the artiste has shagged, punched or dissed... Well that s what some people would have you to believe--- Not Johnny Boy! Johnny Boy a.k.a. Davo (guitars, loops, vocals) and Lolly (more guitars, loops, vocals) were first scanned on the underground just over a year ago when they announced their arrival with the Johnny Boy Theme on Welsh indie label Bobbytraps monthly Singles Club. It popped out of the speakers like nothing before, or until this new single since. Church bells, boy-girl vocals, loops, twists, warps, walls of sound and edgy guitars combined to rekindle the idea of Sandista-era Clash having an, erm, shootout with Phil Spector. Johnny Boy make the kind of music that made Britain great, a perfect tonic for these dark times that will invade your headspace, and spread the good message across the airwaves. Though theres two lifetimes of ideas and the contents of gods own jukebox thrown into the Johnny Boy sound, in many ways its simple music: well-written, catchy pop songs with strong melodies that are built up, twisted and contorted and pulled back straight, before another few rounds of morphing can begin. Elements of their approach have been used by artists before, but its mostly stuff that gets filed under ambient doodling; Johnny Boy, on the other hand, pays high regard to the TUNE. Its extremely song-based stuff and in my mind if youre going to go down that road you either have to do whats been done before even better than it was done or else do something completely new, explains Davo. We kind of set out to be as avant-garde as we could be and as pop as we could be at the same time.