If you've been following the meteoric rise of Franz Ferdinand, you might well have wondered about the relatively advanced age of singer Alex Kapranos - he's pushing 30. So what was he doing all those years? Well, for part of the time at least, he was leader of The Karelia, an utterly obscure Scottish pop-jazz outfit whose one and only album (from 1997) has now been re-released. FF fans shouldn't get carried away - there's an air of cabaret about these songs that makes Divorce at High Noon more of a novelty record than anything else. On the other hand, some of the familiar Kapranos qualities were already present and correct: the languid drawling vocals and the arch Noel Coward wit. In fact, it's a bit of a mystery why the Divine Comedy's career took off at around the same time and this sank without trace. In any case, it's fully deserving of a second look.
