Posted in Whathaveyou on May 3rd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
A quarter-century later, The Heads are still too much vibe for the planet. Come back in another 25 years and maybe humanity will be caught up to the Bristol lords o’ space, but frankly, I don’t think we’re there yet as a species. Relaxing With… (discussed here) was indeed released before the turn of the century, and it continues to resound with past-as-future, out-of-time relevance, too weird for its day and so continually timeless. In any case, it’s more than earned the 25th anniversary release it’s being given on June 25 through Rooster Records, paired with the band’s of-the-era Peel Session — I walked by that studio in Maida Vale last time I was in London; it’s in a very posh neighborhood — as well as some other BBC odds and ends from ’95/’96. My freshman year of high school. I was nowhere near cool enough to be listening to The Heads. I’m still not, but one has aspirations.
The PR wire sent this along, doing the thing it does:
Announcing 25th Anniversary Silver Jubilee Vinyl Edition of THE HEADS Debut Album Relaxing With… on Rooster Records
IT’S 25 YEARS (THIS MONTH) Since the first Heads album was released.. .so.. for 2021..Rooster has decided to get the album back in print on vinyl.. but changing the artwork. With some silver foiling and bordering, the single sleeve has been boosted to a sweet gatefold, Rooster also got the Radio 1 sessions from the time remastered, and re-cut along with the huge b-side to their Television 7″ “Jellystoned Park”.
So there you have it, a double vinyl silver jubilee reissue of a fantastic debut album!
Tracklist
LP 1 Original Album: Silver Vinyl Pressing Side A: 1. Quad 2. Don’t Know Yet 3. Chipped 4. Slow Down 5. U33 Side B: 1. Television 2. Woke Up 3. Widowmaker 4. Taken Too Much 5. Coogan’s Bluff
LP 2 Radio Sessions & 7″ B-side Side C: First John Peel Sessions: 1. Chipped (Peel Session, Maida Vale 10/11/95) 2. Widowmaker (Peel Session, Maida Vale 10/11/95) 3. Theme (Peel Session, Maida Vale 10/11/95) 4. Woke Up (Peel Session, Maida Vale 10/11/95) 5. Spliff Riff (Peel Session, Maida Vale 10/11/95)
Side D: More Radio 1 Sessions / B-side: 1. Quad (Live BBC Radio 1 Rock Show, Glasgow 31/03/96) 2. U33 (Live Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio 1, Manchester 02/05/96) 3. Television (Live Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio 1, Manchester 02/05/96) 4. Jellystoned Park ( b-side of Television 7″)
From the original reissue sales notes: “The Heads had self-released a couple of 7″‘, and then Cargo Uk’s inhouse label Headhunter UK got to release a further 7″, and then the Debut album in 1996. Amidst a world suffocating in Britpop smarm, the Heads cut a timely swathe with their unkempt rock psychedelique. The album contained 10 tracks of guitar driven, amp destroying rock, with cues taken straight from the US underground, Stooges, MC5, Mudhoney, Pussy Galore, early Monster Magnet too but with a disitinctly British stamp, some of the drone and fuzz from Loop / Spacemen 3, some of the attitude of the Fall, Pink Fairies and Walking Seeds and overlaid with the spaced rock of early Hawkwind. It was obvious that the four members of the Heads were music obsessives. The debut album was recorded at Foel studios (owned by Dave Anderson from Hawkwind) and engineered by Corin Dingley, it was mastered by John Dent at LOUD.”
A little post-Roadburn worship for The Heads, and well earned. Some 22 years after making their debut via Relaxing With…, the UK psych lords remain thoroughly untamed — their sound rife with searing freakouts and a sense of what might’ve happened if the UK had put garage rock on the Voyager probe and then had it return to earth warped by the very fabric of the universe. To listen to the wah attack of “Woke Up” or the bit of ’60s-style boogie thrown into “U33,” it’s clear The Heads — guitarist/vocalist Simon Price, bassist Hugo Owen Morgan, guitarist Paul Allen and drummer Wayne Maskell — at least had some sense of what they were doing at the outset. That’s not to intimate the opposite applies to “Chipped” or “Slow Down” or “Widowmaker,” but just that there’s a decent amount of Relaxing With… that seems to have been purposefully left to chance and that exploration of sound has always been a crucial element of who they are as a band. Don’t believe me? “Coogan’s Bluff.”
Perhaps with the exception of the grungey “Taken too Much,” which is placed right before the closer, almost none of Relaxing With… sounds any more dated than it wants to, and rather than simply adopt the stylistic tenets of space rock, or psychedelia, or heavy rock, or garage, etc., The Heads took all these things and made them their own in a potent sonic brew running a brisk 44 minutes of tripped out, freaked out thrust, like the pent-up energy of a collapsing star about to go nova — one great big “pop” in the galaxy emitting gravity waves that continue to ripple. With Price‘s yeah-I’m-stoned-what’s-the-problem vocals adding a persistent laid back factor over Maskell‘s thud and push and Morgan‘s low end fuzz adding weight to the outward thrust of Price and Allen‘s guitars, The Heads were even in their beginning stages a complete band, each member complementing the others’ work in effort to create a more consuming whole.
That effort pays off all across Relaxing With…, from the wash of noisy swirl that starts opener “Quad” to the switched-on bizarro vibes that persist from there. Was this the birth of what people seem so eager now to dub “neo-psych,” as if psychedelia ever went away? Rest assured, I have no idea, but more than two decades on, The Heads‘ initial salvo of “Quad,” “Don’t Know Yet” and the somewhat thicker “Chipped” still hits like a rogue asteroid in the Russian wilderness. “Slow Down,” appropriately enough, eases on the throttle and brings Price‘s vocals forward but holds onto a threat of explosion in its post-midsection thud, even if what materializes is another verse and some backwards guitar before a couple shouts and the winding final measure of guitar solo arrive. Morgan‘s bass begins “U33” and makes a highlight of it, and at just over two minutes, “Television” scorches out garage fuzz with a punkish intensity and basks in its hookish vocal pattern.
The dirt-poetry of the lyrics is punctuated by the drum stomp, and as the song opened with a “Wow!,” so too does it close with one, a quick sample leading to the freakout of “Woke Up,” which is no less all-go than the preceding cut, but stretches a minute further and takes more of a traditional rock feel, and “Widowmaker” holds to it, despite feeling more molten even in its moments of blasting-forward intensity, which come and go but seem alway to be purking thanks to the tension in Maskell‘s cymbal work. “Widowmaker” is a highlight of the record, paying off in assaulting volume before a long-fadeout toy-piano sample leads into the strum and jangle that starts “Taken too Much,” moving quickly into more drastic quiet/loud tradeoffs marked by the post-Nirvana feel in the low end and the particularly druggy lyrical thematic. Maybe it’s with a bit of irony that “Taken too Much” is positioned right ahead of the “You only pass through this life once, jack, you don’t come back for an encore,” sample that begins “Coogan’s Bluff,” but whatever the intent was, it works.
One of the aspects of Relaxing With… that works so well is that the album happens in quick shots. While modern psych is given to these long, sometimes indulgent excursions, only two of the album’s first nine tracks pass four minutes in length. That makes “Coogan’s Bluff,” which uses every second of its 11:35, all the more a standout. The jam feels all the more massive for the tightness of the songwriting preceding, and as The Heads shove their way through solo after solo, groove on top of groove, they stand tall as new warriors on the edge of time, breathing life into a genre that, again, was thought dead when it never actually was. The dynamic between Allen, Maskell, Morgan and Price is by then long established but perhaps not displayed anywhere else as clearly as it is on “Coogan’s Bluff,” as the band moves ahead into vast reaches yet uncharted and delivers a gradual comedown, hitting the apex in another shit-hot lead that ends in the second half and gives way to consistent toms and noise that lets the listener make their way slowly back to reality, such as it is.
I’m not sure it’s possible for a band to be massively influential, critically lauded, have a consistent loyal fanbase and a number of offshoot projects while still being underrated, but if it is, The Heads are. I’ll say they’re not really a band I got until I saw them on stage and felt the full force of their delivery and volume, how they not only play this music, but execute it on a physical level. I don’t mean they’re thrashing around or anything, just that there are four members of The Heads and the sound they make when they come together is enough of a presence to be counted as a fifth. To think of Relaxing With… as their debut and to imagine hearing it for the first time when it was released before the turn of the century, it’s no wonder they’ve become who they are. Thankfully, that spirit of outward-directed exploration and ongoing creative development has never left them, and they still sound keen to try something new each time, as their hyper-populated and nearly impossible to track discography proves. That only makes them all the more special, and as Relaxing With… was the nexus of that ongoing process, it’s a moment well worth celebrating.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
—
Interesting week, coming back and coming down from the aforementioned Roadburn fest in the Netherlands — to see all the coverage of Roadburn 2018, click here — and returning to whatever it is that passes for normalcy these days. I’ve had some good baby-time with The Pecan, so that’s been excellent. Six months on, he’s just starting to crawl and getting to the point where he’s more than a glob of human need, so playing has become more than basically showing him things and having him not be able to hold them. I’ve been singing him SubRosa, Anathema and Alice in Chains songs. He can sit up. He’s getting a bit of personality. Seems only a matter of time before he calls me a prick for something or other.
Busy week though. I apparently completely screwed up the scheduling this week on some stuff. That only makes life more difficult for me — also The Patient Mrs., so also me again — but it means I’m doubled up Monday and while I want to take a few days next week and get caught up on reviews I’ve been meaning to write, there’s still a lot going on that needs covering. I’m still getting caught up on news from being away and from before I went away, so I hope you’ll bear with me on that. Here’s what’s in the notes for next week, tentative as ever:
Mon.: Trevor’s Head full stream, Tusmørke track premiere.
Tue.: Sleep review.
Wed.: Grayceon review.
Thu.: Abramis Brama review.
Fri.: Track premiere/announcement from Cursed Tongue Records.
Some stuff still needs to be filled in, but again, I’m way behind on news and I think Amorphis put out another video. I might review that record next Friday and keep with the week’s apparent theme of things I think kick ass, but we’ll see how it goes, how much time there is and whatnot.
Speaking of, I’m pretty limited on time at the moment as the baby has a doctor’s checkup this morning and needs a bath before so he doesn’t show up like a crustpunk, and I still have another news post to put together for today — the one about Yawning Man signing to Heavy Psych Sounds — so I better wrap on the quick, but before I do, I just want to say thanks again if you got to check out any of the Roadburn coverage.
It was a little weird being there this year and missing the baby, and even weirder feeling like I was holding back from talking about that in the posts — what does it mean when I don’t feel comfortable having an open and fully honest conversation in the space that’s supposed to be my sole outlet for such a thing? — but you have to believe me when I say I understand how unbelievably lucky I was to be there in the first place and that it was a gift, as always. I have no doubt that, at the end of 2018, Roadburn will once again have been the center of it.
On that note, I’m out. I have two bios to write this weekend — an update for Kings Destroy and one for Small Stone’s next release that I’m woefully late on — and two reviews to write for Monday as noted above, so yeah, I’ll be around. In the meantime, thanks for reading as always and have a great and safe weekend.
