Monday, May 18, 2009

Headless Heyday - Nothing Up There Always

(Tantrum, 1987)

Boy, I don’t really know what to say about this one. It made its way to me from the WERS dumpster, and neither the dustiest corners of the internet nor old issues of Forced Exposure offer up much info on these Boston-area knuckleheads. Odd, too, since “Nothing Up There Always” is a pretty prime shot of guitar-abuse nuttiness that certainly deserves at least that level of obscurity. And so, uninterested as I’ve been through the years in most of America’s 1980s amp-busters (aside from olden-days Touch & Go stuff), I have to resort here to the pathetic “Sonic Youth + pop” comparison, due both to my ignorance and to the mix of the sheer BIGNESS of the record’s sound and its relative tightness songwrite-wise. Sorry sorry sorry. But yeah, there are enough careening waves of guitar indigestion on all three songs to make any proto-shoegaze band moisten its bangs with tears of jealousy, though the overall FEEL is decidedly Rock, with aggression set on “medium” and ABANDON set on “kinda high.” I like it! As another webbernet goof notes, Headless Heyday recorded under multiple names and released an LP (which includes “Windscreen” from this 7” and was in fact written up in FE #16), and, by gum, I’d be willing to shell out a bill or perhaps six for such an album. Tomorrow? Yes. And you? Scour your local dollar bin and emerge proud should you find any music produced by these noisy gentlemen. Is worth it.

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