Josef K, "Entomology"
For all their brooding, muffled fatalism and urgent, agile glamour, Josef K's smartest feature may have been their gleeful determination to shun cliché. They always sounded less destined for hit than myth, and despite not being an unqualified success, this compilation reveals that -at best- their juxtaposition of joy and grimness remains cathartic.
Josef K aren't unique in defying an easily coined description of their essence. Umberto Eco once wrote something to the effect that popular music was on a path to such monotony that eventually the slightest nuance would seem like a musical feast. It's doubtful he heard Josef K, but if they were a coin, then a romantic, amateur dynamic would be heads and a wry manifestation of Eco's opinion would be tails. At times they sported an unadorned melancholy, at others a resplendent, wired, quasi-funk-by-numbers. Their dialectic infused alienated seriousness with tongue-in-cheek fun; as if they surfed on effluent, crossed Hoy in brown suede shoes, and waltzed through fog in sunglasses.
Whether or not they were the blueprint for future small labels, Postcard put out some lovely records. Their beautifully packaged singles proclaimed "The Sound of Young Scotland," yet always felt like the creation of a cottage industry. Both the handwriting-style script and the design of a be-kilted sword-dancing lad imitated an amusing incongruity best executed by that well known snood fancier, Glen Baxter. It bugs me then that the cover of Entomology goes instead for a somewhat heavy-handed allusion to Franz Kafka, perhaps because, despite the name, Josef K never sounded that obvious. On the contrary, they sounded as if they inhabited a corridor of uncertainty; confident as thieves, elusive as youthful exuberance, scratchy, spiraling, hypnotic, groovy, confused, literate, lonely, happily in the shadows. I may be dumb, but the passage of time hasn't erased all the mystery from their lyrics, which still hang like narrative snippets of overheard dialogue.
When listening to Gordon McIntyre from Ballboy & Money Can't Buy Music, at times the late Billy Mackenzie, sometimes even Edwyn Collins, it seems entirely reasonable to demand that every band get a Scottish singer; to insist on the suggestion of the mournful, the wry phrasing as effortless as cold-breath, the thistle-sharp wit and warm-as-Talisker brogue. Paul Haig's voice sometimes skims as gracefully as a pebble across the water. On the magnificent "Chance Meeting," his disconcerting croon holds both the swooning nostalgia of Ferry and the cranked deja vu of Devoto. Malcolm Ross's guitar as scalpel approach is as well-suited to the spunky discord as to the doomed romance. If the past is a foreign country, Josef K are welcome time-travelers, bringing a wealth of hopeless, languid, tension and bags of tragic, restrained, contradictory fun. I prefer the truly exquisite singles, but there's plenty to enjoy from across their fleeting existence. They originally sounded like they existed in the past tense and a quarter of a century hasn't altered those images. In a sense, the deja vu is now double. Anyone wanting more: LTM have a good history of Josef K and many other neglected artists on their roster. As for the grandiose notion of their legacy? It's kinda funny...
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