Always the same – you wait oodles of years and two Headcoat/Headcoatee albums come along at once. In fairness, it makes a wallet-relieving change from them releasing an album every other week.
Thee Headcoatees – ‘Man-Trap’ – Damaged Goods
Longest out of action, by a long chalk, are Thee Headcoatees, but the full headcoat count is present: Ludella Black, Kyra LaRubia, Bongo Debbie and Holly Golightly. It’s no surprise that the intervening years – all 26 of them – have not dulled their edge. Looking backwards to look forwards, their cover of The Ramones‘ ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’ has a Spector-esque yearning, all echo chamber heartbreak and tambourine shimmer. It’s a bold opener, setting the tone for an album that’s less garage stomp and more haunted sock-hop.
The title track ‘Man Trap’ is a swaggering stomp, all fuzz and femme fatalism, while ‘Signals of Love’ channels girl-group harmonies through a cracked garage mirror. There’s a mix of covers and originals, each delivered with deadpan venom and lo-fi charm. ‘Paint It, Black’ gets stripped to its bones, and then has the bones sandblasted with cat litter. ‘Walking on My Grave’ and ‘He’s Gonna Kill That Girl’ are punkish laments, full of doomed romance and back-alley bravado. ‘Modern Terms of Abuse’ and ‘The Double Axe’ lean into Childish’s lyrical absurdity, while ‘Becoming Unbecoming Me’ is a standout: a country-inflected Medway identity crisis evolves into a Shangri-Las death song.
The production is defiantly primitive, naturally, but there’s an air of nostalgia that isn’t mawkish but rather disbelieving that they’re able to pick up exactly where they left off, and the world has only become more bizarre, and therefore deserving of even less regard. Thee Headcoatees haven’t returned to relive the past, they’ve come to remind us how thrillingly weird and vital it always was.
With 14 tracks of grit, wit, and garage glamour, Man-Trap is a triumphant re-entry. It doesn’t update the formula, and in doing so, it’s every bit as sharp, strange, and swaggering as their ‘90s heyday.
Thee Headcoats – ‘The Sherlock Holmes Rhythm n Beat Vernacular’ – Damaged Goods
Meanwhile, it’s only been two years since Billy Childish, Bruce Brand and Tubs Johnson picked up where they left off, and the title alone will tell you that the irreverent approach has not changed a jot. Billy Childish dons the deerstalker and pipe, dragging his garage trio into the foggy alleyways of Victorian London, where the riffs are raw and the crimes are rhythm-based.
Far from the first time, Holmes and Watson are invoked, but are chased around the dining room table with a musket rather than venerated. Riddled with riffs that sound like they were recorded in a broom cupboard, and possibly on brooms, ‘And The Band Played Johnny B. Goode’ kicks things off with a warped tribute to rock’s origin myth, while ‘If People Don’t Like It (It Must Be Good)’ is pure Childish contrarianism, a two-minute sneer at taste and trend.
There’s a mix of menace and melancholy here. ‘100 Yards of Crash Barrier’ and ‘A Common Disease’ are bleakly poetic, all jagged chords and existential muttering. ‘Dearest Darling’ and ‘The Goddess Tree’ lean into garage balladry, with just enough distortion to keep things from getting sentimental. ‘The Friends of the Buff Medways Fanciers Association’ draws us back into Childish’s endless self-referential world, this time his racket-and-blues-chicken-breeding side hustle.
Elsewhere, ‘The Devil and God Entwined’ girds its chops with string-assaulting vigour. ‘Sally Sensation’ manages to make even the Buff Medways’ version from the early 200s sound quadrophonic, and ‘Got Love If You Want It’ channels early Kinks in an outdoor latrine with the stench of wax overcoats. The standout might be ‘The Baby Who Mutilated Everybody’s Heart’ – a title worthy of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and a track that lurches between heartbreak and horror with gleeful abandon. It sounds like 60% of anything the band has ever recorded, and long may that continue. Closing track ‘Modern Terms of Abuse’ (also featuring on Thee Headcoatees’ album) wraps things up with a sardonic snarl, reminding us that while the costumes may occasionally change, the Headcoats’ disdain for modernity remains intact.
Recorded at Ranscombe Studios in Rochester, the album sounds gloriously unrefined, even by their standards, guitars buzz like faulty neon, drums thud like wellies on lino, and vocals are spat rather than sung. It’s all very silly, very loud, and very Headcoats.
Together with Man-Trap, this release forms a kind of Medway diptych: one snarling, one swooning, both unmistakably Childish. Whether you’re here for the girl-group grit or the garage grind, may you forever keep your pipe in your jaw and strum to kill.
Daz Lawrence