Josef K
It’s Kinda Funny

After reviewing Orange Juice's debut, I felt guilty and couldn't understand why. Then I realized that the other leg was missing and I immediately remedy with a spontaneous review of the cousins Josef K from Edinburgh. Finally, now you can start running…

…At the beginning of everything was Alan Horne's Postcard Records. Then came Josef K, and the world of independent music would never be the same again. It may have been the fleetingness of their career - just two years from the debut of “Chance Meeting” to the farewell with the “Farewell Single” - that encouraged dreams of what they could have been or become. The fact is that Josef K disappeared suddenly, so ripe with unfulfilled promises to constitute a sort of “irresistible lure” for all those who loved to frolic in the post-punk pond. And we of course took the bait like freshwater tunas (!?), because it's a well-known story that “the sound of young Scotland” became mythical and adored, far beyond its real value. In the end, we're talking about "young and stupid" lads who strummed their instruments quite poorly and sang even worse, but so be it…

Anyway, let's do a bit of history for the more distracted ones. The Scottish scene of the late '70s polarized around the two main cities, and if the Glasgow bands (Orange Juice, The Pastels, Aztec Camera, etc.) professed admiration for Love and The Byrds, similarly, the Edinburgh bands (Josef K, Fire Engines, Scars) were surely more indebted to the caustic traits of Television and The Voidoids. However, everyone loved Uncle Lou's Velvet and, at the same time, “heresy” for the post-punk dogma, they shamelessly winked at funky groups like Chic and The Four Tops. Even in the Highlands, punk had wiped out any idyll with traditional rock, which was considered the ultimate “anti-chick magnet”. In both cities, there was a fermenting scene, and we're not talking about Simple Minds or Deacon Blue. In truth, there was more harmony than discord between the two Scottish scenes, but when it came to Josef K's music, the opposite was also true. Discord was indeed a fundamental ingredient of the band's sharp and electrifying sound. Venturing into their microcosm full of doubts and contradictions means giving up the idea of pop perfection and choosing a path much more arduous than that of their cousins Orange Juice.

The world of Josef K was always black and white, just like their music. Personally, I adored each of their "noir" steps that gave constant charm and tension to their bristly songs. And their monochromatic imagery, which seemed to come from a Doisneau shot, suspended between cumbersome literary references like Kafka and Camus, was for a few brief years mine too. When I try to imagine those cold and dark evenings, in some smoky and ramshackle venue out of the way in Edinburgh, where a handful of desperate people shook their locks obsessively to the furious sound of “Sorry for Laughing”, well, when I make this film, I go into rock'n'roll ecstasy and lose myself in the illusion of having participated too. From my fourteen-year-old bedroom, I wouldn't have wanted anything else.

The record I want to talk to you about now synthesizes, like perhaps no other before, the magic of those lost days. Published on vinyl by the evergreen Belgian label “Les Disques du Crépuscule”, it sequentially hosts the first singles by Josef K, apparently quite fragile and battered in how they naively seek an initial combination of pop, funk, and psychedelia. The album is titled like their best song ever, “It's Kinda Funny”. The ballad in question is a rare gem even in their production. A wobbly guitar jangle with the counterpoint of Paul Haig's detached and a bit bored voice, not exactly a slow dance track for “great snogs”. For me, it holds a bit of everything, the indolence typical of Tom Verlaine and the million songs that would derive from that sluggish approach, from The Jesus & Mary Chain to Radiohead to Franz Ferdinand. As I was saying, the record collects those early yet definitive singles of a sound to come. I think Josef K was, without knowing it, an archetypical 45 RPM band, better than albums defined their inconsistent mood and rugged melodies. Nothing that could remotely suggest chart success, as years later bands like Wedding Present tried to do by frantically accelerating their guitars. But compared to their contemporaries, Josef K had a strong nature and an intensity of thought comparable only to that of Joy Division. The attempt to mix punk or what remained of it with funky rhythms, always keeping the pop sensibility high and mechanically moving the songs forward in time, I'm not sure how randomly, but it will soon become a style.

The band seemed to have a strong Don Quixote-like drive against success even if it had arisen accidentally from one of these singles that seemed recorded with the "Geloso" forgotten by their uncle. For this reason, Josef K were always positioned “against”, even beyond their contemporaries like The Associates and the like, who certainly could have shared an anti-rock stance but without the aversion to fabulism that made Josef K something ascetic and unique. In my opinion, their experience was the definitive post-punk experience, without ever disturbing the charts or disturbing comparisons with those who came before.

The compilation album is truly splendid, starting from the cover designed by Jean-François Octave, the same as one of their memorable singles. Here, influences are worn openly and without shame, but they converge to create something innovative. Sometimes the band borrows something from the obscure production of Martin Hannett of "Unknown Pleasures" (“Radio Drill Time”, “Final Request”), other times the sound frets almost gratuitously. Guitars constantly slice through the air while the bass is capricious, as in the beautiful "Crazy To Exist" which could very well come from one of The Fall's early singles. Great songs are definitely there, but they always remain camouflaged under a prickly and inhospitable production. We talk about lo-fi when lo-fi wasn't even well understood. “Chance Meeting”, for example, is as close to a classic as the band ever played, but who can discover it under that dense layer of chords, just like in “Sorry for Laughing”, the latter recently covered even by the punk vultures, Nouvelle Vague. Guitars constantly muddle melodies and it's like peeing on a bush of roses. Like in “The Missionary”, where the sharp riffs of Malcolm Ross's rhythm juxtaposed with Haig's skewed and almost twang lead return a derailing and stinging effect like thorns. Haig's concise and essential vocal style often shamelessly tends to emphasize and hold the final word of each verse, in favor of a very rhythmic and dry enunciation. Like in “Pictures (Of Cindy)” which partly anticipates the charming amateurism of The Pastels and everything that will come.

The record flows like a downpour “straight and fine on hands” and it couldn't be otherwise, don't forget we're in Scotland. The final impression is that, in this tight sequence of songs that to less attentive ears might seem all a bit similar and chaotic, Josef K move with an order all their own, unlike noisy yet slightly unresolved contemporaries like Fire Engines. Their (alleged) greatness lies deep down all in the ability to conjugate the dark verb of post-punk with a perhaps unruly but memorable romanticism. I conclude by stating that Josef K were, in my opinion, a band made for vinyl, if ever there truly was one. This album, printed only on vinyl in 2016, rightfully enters the perfect collection of anyone who might have been interested in alternative music and its origins. Not just for its courage and originality, nor simply because it has the most obstinate and sparkling guitar ever played by any Scottish band, but also because the collection of every true connoisseur cannot disregard legend. And they, rightfully, have become one.