The Johns troll for something personal

The Johns' singer/guitarist Jon Scarpelli is something of a musical Zelig, having tackled virtually every style of music imaginable—be it jazz, jam band noodling or even heavy metal—since his parents first made him play piano as a child.

"When I was 10 years old I played drums in a metal band," says the singer. "Our name was idiotic [Antecedent], but our logo was pretty cool. It was dripping with blood."

But Scarpelli, whose grandmother purchased that first drum kit from a church garage sale, never felt comfortable with metal's angst ("We grew up in the suburbs; we were harmless"). Still, the band afforded Scarpelli the opportunity to write some of his earliest songs—a challenge for the frontman, who admits that, until his late teens, "I didn't think I had anything to say."

Now that the Johns are about to celebrate the release of their first full-length, "foresight/poorsight," with a concert at Schubas on Monday, Scarpelli is no longer at a loss for words. The Orland Park native talks candidly about wanting to relate to his audience, and "foresight" finds the singer at his most personal. The introspective "Love in a Dangerous Place"—reminiscent of one of Jeff Buckley's soul-baring ballads—is a harrowing breakup anthem. The shuffling "Green Collar" begins as an everyman decree ("I go to work. ... I'm not lonely") before evolving into a meditation on the detachment of modern life.

That's not to say the band is humorless, far from it. At one of the group's early shows at the Store, Scarpelli handed out lyric sheets to the entire bar, turning one tune into a rollicking sing-a-long. The Johns are also aided by the innate chemistry among its band members; Scarpelli is joined by his brother, Mat Scarpelli, and a pair of longtime friends: Mark Carlson (drums) and Tim Smyth (bass). Smyth played alongside the frontman in Antecedent.

Prior to forming the Johns, the musicians played together in Vessel, a hard rock band that Scarpelli describes somewhat vaguely as "an immediate reaction to the hard times in our lives."

"We wanted to make it so you couldn't ignore [the music]," he continues. "We would just scream at people."

The recording sessions for "foresight/poorsight," which started in August at Joyride Studios before concluding in Scarpelli's Logan Square house in recent months, were far more reserved.

"I had a sense I wanted to be in touch with a sadder thing," says Scarpelli. "I guess that's what happens with life. This other side of you develops."