Luft splice British witticisms with Berlin structures on “The Punch and Judy Man”

If Kraftwerk covered The Kinks, and the music video was shot by Wim Wenders but written by Ken Loach, it wouldn’t be too far away from evoking the sound of “The Punch and Judy Man”. “Each song is a little story, stories about England and stories about being in Berlin,” former TOY member and Luft frontman Tom Dougall tells BEST FIT. “The album is kind of half of one and half the other.” As its title suggests, “The Punch and Judy Man” is full of classic British witticisms and observations; Dougall sings, “Behind your back the song’s begun, hear the trickster play the fool”. The lyrics tell of an English seaside resort from which trouble broods. “Luke Haines told me that there’s a film called The Punch and Judy Man, which I didn’t know about at the time,” Dougall explains. “He said it was the most depressing film ever made... there is a snippet just at the end of the song.” The union between Haines (of The Auteurs) and Luft is one that makes so much sense, given their shared interests in new wave and anecdotal references to suburban English life: “Working with Luke Haines was great, we’ve got very similar tastes which makes it very easy when we were mixing and recording. I hope we wor...