Latter-day fans of
Josef K who discovered the group and their leader,
Paul Haig, through the neo-Brit-pop bands that take the Scottish indie stalwarts as one of their main starting points (we're looking at you,
Franz Ferdinand) may be the target audience for this reissue of
Haig's solo album
Chain, but be warned:
Chain was originally released in 1989. In other words, there is almost none of the shambolic guitar pop that made
Josef K's name here, because like the majority of
Haig's solo material, this is synthesizer-based dance music. Because it came out in 1989, the year of Madchester and the much-vaunted Return of the Summer of Love, one might expect that
Chain is the sort of jump into Hacienda-style acid house beats in the manner of the albums that compatriots like
New Order, the
Style Council, and even former freakbeat-revivalists merchants
the Times recorded around the same time. Sadly, however,
Chain isn't even particularly interesting as an example of bandwagon jumping, because it largely consists of pretty much exactly the sort of mechanical, bass-driven synth-dance pop that was
Haig's musical mainstay starting with the 1982 single "Blue for You." Produced by
the Associates'
Alan Rankine, who also played and programmed many of the instruments, the album also includes "Chained," a track penned by
Rankine's partner
Billy Mackenzie that sounds like an outtake from one of the
Associates' later albums. There's a small handful of worthwhile tracks, most notably the piano driven "Swinging for You," and the quietly anthemic album closer "Ideal of Living," but for the most part,
Chain is primarily of interest only to diehards. ~ Stewart Mason