Thee Headcoats

Originally released by Friends Of The Buff Medway Fanciers Association in 2000, this was the then-final studio release by Thee Headcoats and includes eleven Billy Childish originals plus a cover of Bo Diddley’s ‘Great Grandfather’.

This collection kicks right off with the album-titled track revelling in pure Headcoats fashion: that warm, fuzzy vibrato guitar with Childish's fuzzy, electronically distorted voice (an effect repeated throughout the album); Johnny Johnson's soft, flowing bassline; and Bruce Brand's primeval drums. The group keeps this sort of mid-tempo riffage going for the next couple of tracks. Johnson plays a mean harp on ‘Hurt Me (Slight Return)’, but things don't really take off until ‘In a Dead Man's Suit’ and the swaggering, Texas blues ‘Chatham Town Welcomes Desperate Men’. The band's punk roots show up in songs like ‘An Image of You’ and ‘Your Crying Means Nothing to Me’ while ‘Come into My Mind’ has a definite Kinks influence.