The Heads – Under Sided (twentieth anniversary edition)

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There was always something so cool and approachable about The Heads.

As Bristol boys, you often saw them at shows there and quite regularly were served by Hugo Morgan over the counter of Replay (RIP even after all these years) and there was always something in the music that also held that approachability.

The murderous rhythms and pummelling guitars might have been trying to fry your brain, but Simon Price‘s laidback vocals and their musical inclusivity gave the impression that if they weren’t on stage, they would be swigging a pint and having their ears scorched, just like you.

The Heads always seemed to have their own agenda too, releasing albums in limited quantities at times that suited them, other projects leaking out on their own and other local labels. They cultivated that kind of following that included record collectors, guitar freaks, stoners and psych lovers, but never to the exclusion of anyone. If you wanted to join in, just come on down and let your hair fly.

It had only been two years since 2000’s sprawling Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, but after a short period on the road, real life caught up with them. It was a real life however that distributed riffs aplenty to carry forward to the next recording sessions and the results were perhaps the most cohesive set of ideas that the band had produced so far.

Under Sided requires serious endurance though, as the eight tracks here stretch to well over an hour and find them settling on a recipe that amongst other things borrows fuzz energy from fellow garage dwellers Mudhoney and the kind of trance-inducing repetition that Spacemen 3 were exploring.

The Heads were always able to push beyond any of these similarities and burrow into a kind of surreal West Country solitude that was theirs alone. Plus, they had one fantastic rhythm section and I think this album is where Hugo and Wayne Maskell were given the room to really shine.

Riffs are bludgeoning and insistent, drums are blistering, motorcycles are revving, the cool, distant voice of Simon drawls in yr ear; the album starts exactly how you want it to and blasts you with the shimmering reverb of the guitars, which leaves Hugo’s bass open to carry the melody and this he does with gusto. Wayne never really lets up and just following his pummelling attack leaves the listener breathlessm and considering the length of tracks like “Trilogy Part 3”, it is a real feat of endurance. Simon is almost obscured, as if you have caught somebody musing in another room.

The sound is surprisingly varied, with the swampy scuzz of “Bedminster#1” sharing space with the odd solo that vanishes like a brief flare. It is the groove that is important here, but later descends into a Fall-like tumult, as if travelling through a tunnel that warps the sound.

Backwards adventures and found textures abound, but they are always greater then the sum of their parts, with it ever a pleasure to follow the rhythm section on their spine-tingling and ear-bending journey. If you compare this scuzz with the low, resonant almost-drone of “Energy”, you can really feel the different dimensions that they were looking to explore.

Found sounds are scattered across the tracks at unexpected moments along with various snippets of conversation and they feel like a natural fit. The stormy atmosphere of long form closer “Heavy Ssea” shares space with a motorik groove that could run on forever and really tries to. It is studded with a stuttering array of guitars and lovely bass runs that move through the landscape as the piece progressesm, and even though it takes up one side of an LP, it could go on and on.

With the sound of lapping waves seeing the side out, Under Sided is an impressive and addictive album; but the CD set or the big LP box comes replete with a whole other disc of extras.

This second disc is an array of session tracks, demos and the like, which gives a different perspective on their recording. It opens with a couple of pummelling compilation tracks, fuzzy and bass-heavy, with Simon’s nihilistic voice cutting the air and then Hawkwind-heavy space craziness.

A wild four track Peel Session follows, the highlight of which is the fifteen minute rush through “Fuego”, which is utterly irresistible fuzzing and phasing and grooving seemingly in perpetuity. God knows how they fitted it in as it is as long as most people’s whole sessions. Two Whitehouse outtakes follow on; all noodly, hypnotic obsession and backwards experimentation; and the album ends with four demos from the recording of Under Sided, which if anything are even looser and more ramshackle, the band testing one another out to see what they could withstand like a four-way game of chicken.

Vocal-free, they allow you to really focus on the slow burn of the riffs and the impending rhythmic drama. “Energy” is particularly slovenly, with speckles of synth static interspersing and closer “Heavy Sea” is like being dragged by a dredger along the Bristol Channel; a perfect way to end.

The extra disc is not essential but makes for a fantastic differing view, while Under Sided itself still revels in its spattered glory twenty years on. Would they ever improve on this?

-Mr Olivetti-