Draw a line connecting Jerry Lee Lewis, the Kinks, the Stooges, the Who and the Fall. Now scrunch all the points on the line into one big, dense white dwarf of rock 'n' roll energy, dress 'em up in Victorian finery and call the resultant mass Thee Headcoats.
For well over ten years, Billy Childish and Thee Headcoats have mated garage rock standards with a swinging-sixties mindset and a stripped-down punk-rock ethic. Childish recently decided to hang up his Headcoat for good, paving the way for Elementary Headcoats -- a massive compilation of just about every single Thee Headcoats (in various incarnations) have ever released. And it's completely brilliant, in a mammoth, shambling and excessive sort of way. It should satisfy your taste for guitar/bass/drums garage rock for weeks, while serving up odd bits of organ and harmonica for dessert.
Disc One is the more eccentric of the set; it takes in a lot of the group's sillier, dandier material, like "Headcoats On" and the distinctly toffee-nosed "Headcoat Lane", while also incorporating moments of brilliance like "(We Hate the Fuckin') NME" and "My Dear Watson", which is easily the best rock song ever written about Sherlock Holmes. Expect to hear a lot of rock 'n' roll's most familiar tunes co-opted for Thee Headcoats' purposes, as the collected Headcoats singles play like a who's who of "public domain" blues and rock riffs and progressions. Then again, this is an album that includes no fewer than three disparate spins on "Louie Louie" (including the inspired -- from both historical and songwriting perspectives -- "Louie Riel"), so you shouldn't expect much ground-breaking. Garage rock was always more about volume than innovation.
Disc Two also takes its share of cues from Swinging London, but punk rock rears its angry head on tunes like "Action Time Vision" and the almost unintelligible "I've Been Fuckin' Your Daughters and Pissing on Your Lawns". The line between garage rock and punk is so thin here as to be invisible, and Childish et al jump back and forth across it as if they were standing on a property-line, taunting a border-conscious neighbor. The blistering closure provided by "Is it Art or is it Arse?" suggests that Billy, while better dressed than most, is still punk as fuck-all.
Naturally, over fifty songs the whole thing gets a bit repetitive. If you don't like the first few songs on Disc One, things aren't going to get a whole lot better for you. If you like -- or, given the strong response they typically engender, love -- Thee Headcoats' sound, fifty songs is just a drop in the bucket. But there's no denying that these songs are "singles" in the classical sense of the word: they're not necessarily meant to stand up to close examination, or to be considered en masse. They're intended to inspire thoughts like "Gosh, I liked that," or "Gosh, I want to hear that one again" rather than deep revelations about the nature of humankind.
If you've never delved into Thee Headcoats' vast and convoluted discography, Elementary Headcoats will provide a sudden, white-hot revelation: you've been missing out on some great stuff. On the bright side, if you're an obsessive completist collector and Elementary Headcoats is your introduction to thee group, you've just opened a door to years of happy hunting. Plan on replacing a lot of blown-out stereo speakers along the way.
