Johnny Foreigner have announced the release of their forthcoming album, Forwards!, along with the lead single, “The New Navigation”, and confirmed dates for an upcoming UK headline tour.
The Birmingham‑based indie group will issue the record on 4 September through Alcopop! Records, following 2024’s How To Be Hopeful. Pre‑orders and pre‑saves are available on their official channels.
They describe the project as a “small collection of songs” that centre on their home city. The album contains ten full‑length tracks: six distinct songs each named after prominent Birmingham media references, and four field recordings that reflect the city’s soundscape.
To preview Forwards!, the four‑piece shared the noisy, thrashing cut “The New Navigation”. The title nods to the 18th‑century folk tune “Birmingham Lads (The New Navigation)”, which celebrates the city’s new waterways and its appeal as a place to live.
Frontman Alexei Berrow explained that their version critiques the 1945 Distribution of Industry Act, which allegedly stifled Birmingham’s growth, and highlights the present‑day “managed bankruptcy” that cuts services, sells assets, and displaces residents.
In total, Forwards! guides listeners through key moments in Birmingham’s history— from the Lunar Society and Priestley Riots, through post‑war brutalist redevelopment, to the current era marked by apathy, strikes, mysterious fires, and misguided patriotism stoked by grifters.
The album emerges from the band’s perspective of Birmingham as both a microcosm of the wider country and a laboratory for two centuries of Westminster experimentation. The title draws on the city’s often‑derided civic motto.
Throughout the record, luxury trio Luxury Nan Smell contribute backing vocals as The City Elders, offering interruptions, questions, and commentary that resemble a running director’s commentary. Brittany Bowen appears as The Lords Of Change, a recurring voice embodying the landlords, lawmakers, and civic power brokers who shape the city from above.
In a statement, Johnny Foreigner said: “This record reflects where we came from and why we are the way we are. It is a commentary on how parliamentary and media narratives foment division, how a nominally progressive Labour council became ineffective and corrupted, and how we once took pride in our ingenuity and hope. Today, that pride has waned.”
They concluded, “We’re immensely proud of what we’ve created, yet, as Birmingham natives, we find it challenging to express this openly.”
Johnny Foreigner’s Forwards! will be supported by a UK headline tour in September.
SEPTEMBER
03 – JT Soar, Nottingham
04 – The Social, London
06 – The Joiners, Southampton
07 – The Exchange, Bristol
08 – Dead Wax, Norwich
09 – Yellow Arch Studios, Sheffield
10 – Hare and Hounds, Birmingham
13 – YES, Manchester
17 – The Fighting Cocks, Kingston