Butcher Boy - You Had A Kind Face

Butcher Boy’s ‘You Had A Kind Face’ is the tenth release from the acclaimed Needle Mythology label. The album is an anthology of songs by the revered Glasgow band originally released between 2007 and 2017.

Butcher Boy released three albums of literate, melodic pop songs, none of which were released on vinyl, before returning in 2017 for a stand-alone EP Bad Things Happen When It’s Quiet. Gathering together songs from all of these releases, vinyl copies of You Had A Kind Face also come with a seven-inch made up of three brand new songs including the new single 'Dear John'.

The album has been mastered for vinyl by Miles Showell at Abbey Road and pressed on 180g vinyl at The Vinyl Factory. Long-time fan of Butcher Boy, the author John Niven has written a devastatingly beautiful complement to the songs on You Had A Kind Face drawn from his own early memories of pacing the same Irvine streets where the band’s songwriter John Blain Hunt spent his formative years. The images used for this anthology are all taken from a series of 1979 photographs by John Walmsley capturing the new town landscape of Wester Hailes in South-East Edinburgh. Now in his 70s, Walmsley was so taken with Butcher Boy’s music that he assented to the use of previously unseen photographs for You Had A Kind Face.

For Needle Mythology founder Pete Paphides, the release of You Had A Kind Face is the culmination of a love affair that began back in April 2009, when Butcher Boy’s second album React Or Die was about to come out. “It was as close to an out-of-body experience as I’ve had listening to music in my adult life,” he recalls. “I was working for The Times back then, I called my editor on Monday morning and told her that we had to make this our album of the week. And the other thing I remember was that I was so nervous writing my review, the way you would be nervous writing a letter declaring your feelings for someone with whom you had fallen in love. Because I had.”