Album of the day: The Heads – Under The Stress of A Headlong Dive

The Heads’ Under The Stress of A Headlong Dive is now available as a double LP on Invada / Rocket Recordings. What Drew Webster said when Roadburn reviewed the CD version back in 2006:

Listening to The Heads is an immersive experience. Has been ever since they first committed supremely overdriven fuzz guitar to tape those many (13?!) years ago. They bring a furiously swirling wall of fuzz to you and you either hang on for the ride or get the hell out of the way. No surprise then, that there is no way to hang out on the periphery and delicately absorb their newest release, Under the Stress of a Headlong Dive. It’s going to bust down your doors, strip off it’s work jacket, jump in your lap and stick it’s tongue directly in your ear. Shoegazer psychedelia fans beware -this is fully interactive rock and roll.

The Heads – Under the Stress If you’ve not heard The Heads before [uhh... what the hell is wrong with you?], then …Headlong Dive is a magnificent place to start. It is another example of their psychedelic / garage / punk replete with all ferocious riffs, walls of fuzz, unhinged analog effects and disaffected spacy vocals that make them so compelling. Old timers will notice a growing influence of Krautrock in their sound as well as a further refinement in their overall production. This is not to say that they sound any slicker -they don’t… if anything the enhanced production results in a weirder, wilder headspace.

Just when you thought you had heard the best of The Heads -kings of modern stoner psych- they begin to morph into a timeless band, simultaneously reinterpreting the past while barrelling headlong into the future. Their fabulous fuzzy riffs now seem propelled by the indomitable spirit of Jaki Leibezeit and Klaus Dinger as much as by Keith Moon and Mitch Mitchell and the newfound motorik relentlessness drives the guitars to larger and denser squalls of distortion as well as allowing them the freedom to explore minimalist melodic progression. The completely schizoid production then takes these bedrock elements of psychedelic garage music and splashes them all over the soundfield canvas with no regard for convention or custom.

The mix will often combine three completely distinct soundspaces. Take opener ‘Earth/Sun’ for instance… the drums are huge set in a huge amorphous warehouse, cymbals splashing messily off of distant walls, kick and toms sounding as much of the body of the drum as the attack of the stick. The guitars then are in a small, tight wooden room full of warm reflections and thick with tone. The vocals, disconcertingly, seem to come from directly inside your head, gauzy musings of laid back hipness that seem to suggest further drug use will let you divine their innermost meaning.

The innovative production techniques of band member Wayne Masskell (owing much to the quality analog tones recorded by Gareth Turner) stand out from the current stagnant techniques that mark virtually every heavy riff rock that comes out these days. As wonderful as the bass-heavy Chris Goss and Billy Anderson records sound, it’s a refreshing and invigorating change to listen to The Heads. They remind us that while modern technology lets us achieve perfect sound, imperfection is infinitely more interesting and ultimately more rewarding.

Tags: album of the day, Invada, psychedelica, Rocket Recordings, the heads, Under The Stress of A Headlong Dive

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 9:40 am and is filed under Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.