Sorry for Laughing

There’s a mythic weight to albums that almost never saw the light of day—Sorry For Laughing by Josef K carries that burden with sharp defiance and wiry grace.

Recorded in 1980 but shelved for being too “polished,” the album was denied its moment in the spotlight at the time. What surfaced instead was The Only Fun in Town, a more brittle, murkier listen. Yet in retrospect, Sorry For Laughing sounds less like a compromise and more like a statement: an angular, melodic, nervy bolt of post-punk energy that could only come from a band teetering on the edge of something.

The guitars are spindly, stabbing with surgical precision. The rhythm section jangles and twitches, equal parts funk and fury. Paul Haig’s existential croon floats somewhere between disdain and desperation, the perfect foil to the clean, cutting lines around him. There’s a restless intelligence here—songs like “The Angle” and “Revelation” crackle with movement, ideas, and a kind of stylish anxiety.

What makes Sorry For Laughing so compelling is its tension. It wants to dance, but it’s too self-aware. It wants to feel, but it won’t quite let you in. That push-pull—between dissonance and melody, polish and panic—makes the record timeless. It’s no wonder later bands cite it as an influence; these are ageless anthems for doomed youth, as one review put it.

Long hidden in the shadow of its own absence, Sorry For Laughing is now rightly regarded as a post-punk classic. It may have been too clean for its time, but in hindsight, its clarity only sharpens the sting. A panic attack in a golden underpass? Maybe. But one you’ll want to revisit again and again.