Opus Kink – The Sweet Goodbye – soundsfromthedarkside

Everybody is talking about Opus Kink. That seems reason enough for us to join the fun.

While some bands spend their first album carefully explaining who they are, Opus Kink seem determined to do the opposite. Just when you think you’ve figured these Brightonians out, they lurch off somewhere else. On their debut album The Sweet Goodbye, they make themselves even harder to define.

After a few listens, I started to think of The Sweet Goodbye less as an album in the traditional sense and more as some strange Dadaist cabaret piece transported into 2026. Characters appear and disappear, the scenery keeps changing and occasionally it feels as though the musicians themselves aren’t entirely sure what is going to happen next. Jazz, post-punk, funk, blues, glam, desert rock, electronics and folk wander on and off stage. What binds it all together, however, is the physical feel of the music. These aren’t songs that politely wait for you to pay attention. They barge in.

Opening track Come Over, Do Me Wrong immediately sets the tone. It’s catchy, slightly sinister and dominated by a wonderfully dirty trumpet. The horns aren’t decoration here; they lead the procession, almost luring us to follow. Still, there is that nagging feeling that following these people down the street might not be an entirely sensible decision. Of course I followed, only to find myself almost immediately dragged onto the dancefloor by the pulsing bassline and groove of the second track. LCD Soundsystem is not far away here, but Opus Kink feels dirtier and less controlled. Where LCD can make repetition feel clinical and hypnotic, Opus Kink take the same machinery and start loosening the bolts while it is still running. On I’m A Pretty Showboy, the band doubles down on the tempo. Impatient and seemingly unconcerned with other road users, the song races forward, starts falling apart and then somehow puts itself back together again. With Opus Kink, chaos is not the opposite of musicianship, it is part of the arrangement.

After this first stretch it is also obvious that the band knows how to make people move. Bass and drums push relentlessly forward, the horns provide their fair share of chaos and pretty-boy singer Angus Rogers can turn any phrase into a crowd chant By now it is clear that Opus Kink are festival-proof. Give them a packed tent, a slightly drunk crowd and forty minutes to work with and people will be saying that they have just seen the band of the weekend. If I was in a band that was playing the next slot, I’d be worried.

Just as The Sweet Goodbye appears to have found its momentum, though, it takes its foot off the accelerator. The Sweet Goodbye and Peckham Nocturne are more restrained, and especially on Peckham Nocturne the landscape becomes dustier and more spacious. I hear something of Howe Gelb here, that particular desert-rock feeling where seemingly not very much is happening, yet something vaguely threatening is lurking in the heat. As a record, The Sweet Goodbye loses some of its urgency around this point.

Then Opus Kink simply change costumes again. I Have To Shine My Sunday Shoes initially has an almost bluesy feel, but at heart it is basically a pub-rock song with a jovial refrain. Instead of ending decisively, it feels as though the band are already leading us towards the next act. And that next act is where the record really comes alive again. The Head Tree is pure power. Theatrical, excessive, catchy and just wayward enough, it seems to contain almost everything Opus Kink have been trying out elsewhere on the album. Rhythm, voices, brass and sheer performance all suddenly fall into place. It has everything in it to be the best track on the record. This is also where the Dadaist cabaret idea feels most convincing. Opus Kink do not merely play songs, they seem to stage them. There is something absurd, exaggerated and knowingly theatrical in the way the track unfolds, but never in a way that suggests the musicians are not taking the music seriously.

448C (The Colour of Love) continues in roughly the same spirit, with the brass section again playing a significant role. By now the horns have become characters in the production themselves. On Crucify! we are far from done. A repetitive beat drives us back onto the dancefloor once more. There are moments here that remind me a bit of Horse Lords, although without that band’s mathematical complexity. Opus Kink wants repetition, but they also want a payoff. So instead of disappearing into rhythmic abstraction, they throw in another genuinely catchy refrain. Then, after all of that, The Sweet Goodbye does not go out with a bang. On Oh, Irony, things end almost in the minor key. The energy recedes, the stage empties and, after all the noise, bravado and absurdity, the curtain simply falls.

The Sweet Goodbye is not perfectly paced. The middle section loses some of the momentum generated by its terrific opening stretch, and not every stylistic excursion is equally convincing. Sometimes Opus Kink seem too excited by the possibility of throwing themselves in yet another direction that they forget how good the road they were already travelling on was.

They could be this year’s flash in the pan that brings an explosion of sweaty festival tents, enthusiastic reviews and one song that suddenly seems to be everywhere. But after spending time with The Sweet Goodbye, I’m not convinced that is where this ends. We might look back on The Sweet Goodbye in a few years as the moment before they became something bigger… or weirder.

For now, the curtain has fallen on act one. Where this strange theatre troupe goes next is anyone’s guess.

Label: SO records, 2026

Buy it here: https://opuskink.terrible.group/

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