REVIEW : Foreign Girls - QRO Magazine

by Ted Chase  July 25, 2008

Note : 7.6


Joseph Arthur sums it all up on his last EP before his LP, Foreign Girls. The Brooklyn singer & songwriter has been releasing one EP a month for a while now, first Could We Survive (QRO review), then Crazy Rain (QRO review), thenVagabond Skies (QRO review), and now finally Foreign Girls. All this is in lead-up to his next full-length, Temporary People, out later this year. And if the EP’s are any indication, it looks to be a wide-ranging Arthur, like on Foreign Girls.


The eponymous opener is low-key in a monotone wry, but has some interesting effects laid over the singer/songwriter vibe. Even stronger is the following “Candy and Cars”, whose alt-country-meets-eighties tech nature is boosted by just enough of a humorous outlook. Arthur goes more ‘traditional’ with the sad, piano-based “Lovely Cost”, but swings too far the other way with the following “Stay”, into too much tech. Most interesting on Foreign Girls is perhaps “The Killer”, whose tech-stop wry grind shouldn’t work, but does. “New Satisfaction” finishes out the EP on a smoother tech technique.


Already known for his prolific nature, including hundreds of unrecorded songs and selling CD burns of a show almost immediately after the set is over, the EP-a-month output shouldn’t come as a surprise from Joseph Arthur. Instead, the surprise is the music, but with Foreign Girls, he never loses his connection to home.