Josef K:
It's Kinda Funny (The Singles):
Les Disques du Crepuscule:
LP only:
Out May 6:
The legacy of Scotland's spiky jangle-funksters Josef K continues apace with this concise complete singles collection covering the band's brief tenure during the early '80s. Sounding nothing like your typical eighties outfit, Messrs Haig, Ross, Torrance, McCormack and, later on, Weddell knocked out less albums in their lifetime than posthumously - reissues of The Only Fun In Town and the long-awaited issue of the cancelled first album as Sorry For Laughing both appeared recently to critical acclaim.
So do we need another? You bet.
Josef K were an archetypal singles band and very much the 'Sound of Young Scotland', issuing six enthusiastic grown-up 7" and one 12" that belied their creators' tender years. Sharing Postcard Records' enviable roster with Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and Go-Betweens, seemed to make sense back in the day - all four acts crafted some fine singles before the label folded in 1981.
Josef K lasted just one year longer, pausing to wind up their contract in Scotland and forge a brief relationship with Brussel's cosmopolitan imprint Crepuscule with the excellent Sorry For Laughing and the mercurial epitaph The Missionary. It is perhaps these two singles that typify the sound that Paul Haig's charges were searching for with the former becoming somewhat legendary a few years later by getting very capably covered by ZTT dance dramatists Propaganda on their debut A Secret Wish.
Other notable moments include the superior Postcard version of Chance Meeting, the understated tenderness of this album's title track, the insistent b-side The Angle and the pre-solo version of Haig's major-label debut single Heaven Sent. In fact the whole damned album is pretty faultless from beginning to end.
Rollicking good fun(k) and all dressed up in a neat adaptation of the iconic Sorry For Laughing sleeve by Jean-François Octave.
★★★★★★★★★☆
It's Kinda Funny (The Singles):
Les Disques du Crepuscule:
LP only:
Out May 6:
So do we need another? You bet.
Josef K were an archetypal singles band and very much the 'Sound of Young Scotland', issuing six enthusiastic grown-up 7" and one 12" that belied their creators' tender years. Sharing Postcard Records' enviable roster with Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and Go-Betweens, seemed to make sense back in the day - all four acts crafted some fine singles before the label folded in 1981.
Josef K lasted just one year longer, pausing to wind up their contract in Scotland and forge a brief relationship with Brussel's cosmopolitan imprint Crepuscule with the excellent Sorry For Laughing and the mercurial epitaph The Missionary. It is perhaps these two singles that typify the sound that Paul Haig's charges were searching for with the former becoming somewhat legendary a few years later by getting very capably covered by ZTT dance dramatists Propaganda on their debut A Secret Wish.
Other notable moments include the superior Postcard version of Chance Meeting, the understated tenderness of this album's title track, the insistent b-side The Angle and the pre-solo version of Haig's major-label debut single Heaven Sent. In fact the whole damned album is pretty faultless from beginning to end.
Rollicking good fun(k) and all dressed up in a neat adaptation of the iconic Sorry For Laughing sleeve by Jean-François Octave.
★★★★★★★★★☆