John Scott's Staff Pick: January 13, 2025

What’s up Sorry State readers, I hope everyone has had a nice week. We got faked out by some snow as usual here in Raleigh this past week. It’s starting to feel like we’ll never get a real good snow ever again. Maybe I should consider us lucky for not having to deal with it, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love a good snow day. Anyways, last week we had our year end lists here at Sorry State and it was awesome to get to read everyone’s list. I’m lucky to have coworkers with such awesome taste in music. This week I’d like to talk about a record I had mentioned in my list actually, The Soul Jazz Records compilation Punk 45 - There is No Such Thing as Society (I’m gonna just go ahead and shorten it to that) which features UK underground punk and post-punk from ‘77-‘81. I picked this up when I was over in London at Sounds of the Universe, which I was really excited to visit on my trip over there. It’s always interesting to listen to music from the end of a decade going into a new one. I feel like you can really hear certain sounds and ideas taking shape before they’re really fully formed. This compilation is particularly great as you get so many styles on here, from the more garage sounding stuff like The Users’ Sick of You, to more dancey/electronic stuff like 23 Skidoo’s Last Words. One thing all these songs have in common, though, is that they’re catchy as fuck and they’re all kinda just lighthearted and seem to not be taking themselves too seriously on tracks like The Shapes’ Wot’s For Lunch Mum? These British lads are all cheeky as hell. You get some real punk rock bangers on here too though, like Puncture’s Mucky Pup, which I believe Sorry State still has some 7” singles of a recent reissue if you wanna pick that up. I think all the Soul Jazz Punk 45 compilations are great and give you a bunch of info about all the releases they include, but I really love this one particularly. Definitely check it out if you haven’t before.

 


Leave a comment