Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/11/06
Label: Domino

Josef K were one of a handful of Scottish bands in the late '70s and early '80s - including Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, Fire Engines, The Scars - working to bridge the post-punk gap, some with the help of Alan Horne's fledgling, influential Postcard Records label. They started off sounding like Gang Of Four meets Joy Division, indeed GO4's Andy Gill could sue for the guitar parts on "Heads Watch" , before slowly finding their melodic feet and then losing guitarist Malcolm Ross to the obviously more upwardly mobile Orange Juice.

Singer Paul Haig's distinctive vocals were aped by a legion of young British indie bands (most notably The Chesterfields) while their spiky tunes and rapid-fire drumming were accomplished and confident enough to see one recorded but abandoned - album in "Sorry For Laughing" and a few great singles. Quite why they abandoned that album is hard to discern listening to it today, such is the impressive material here. The title track is punk-funky and scratchy, "Drone" gloomily urgent - perfect for the times - "Sense Of Guilt" as tuneful as early and "Variation Of Scene" dark, eerie and self-important.

Six months later Josef K did release an album - "The Only Fun In Town" - five songs from which are included here. Slightly poppier perhaps, but with Haig's vocals back in the mix and Ross's guitar, and writing, taking more prominence. The funky (a very big indie trend in 1981) "Heart Of Song" would have graced any student party while "Fun N Frenzy" boasts a great, if bonkers, guitar intro riff. This release on Domino, presumably instigated by that label's own Postcard and Fire Engines inspired Franz Ferdinand, is pretty much a repeat of an earlier 1990 compilation of those two albums.

But, following on from the "CD86" release reviewed here last month, the early '80s indie scene is fast becoming a rich vein to be mined, re-examined and, hopefully, reassessed as a musical landscape that thrived not only through the music of The Smiths. Josef K's "Entomology" won't send the scales falling from your eyes, but the fact that they recorded two albums, an accomplished Peel session (also included here), and were in at the dawn of the Postcard label, means they were able to commit most of their work to studio tape (a luxury many of their peers did not have).

For that, indie scholars and beard-stroking, monthly music magazines should be grateful.

    by Andy Strickland