Bands like Thee Headcoats are no longer produced these days. No, they were never made the way Billy Childish imagines them. The 65-year-old painter, writer, director, photographer and convinced garage rocker with a huge, graying mustache adds a new chapter to his extensive catalog with THE SHERLOCK HOLMES RHYTHM’N’BEAT VERNACULAR. Classifying that is ungrateful, not only because the entire body of work, which probably consists of more than 130 albums, is hardly manageable. But also because what “Spex” author and, fittingly, Billy Childish translator Clara Drechsler once wrote about the Ramones applies once again: If you know one album, you know them all – and they’re all good.
Editorial recommendations
The creaky rock’n’roll with surf melodies, punk attitude and absurd lyrics refers to a golden age that never existed. Retro rock according to the motto: Make garage rock great again! Every song is hammered from the same cloth – until it really hits. For a change, a harmonica is played in “Got Love If You Want It”, but not only “The Baby Who Mutilated Everybody’s Heart” sounds like it was stolen from the Kinks.
The special thing about this new Thee Headcoats album is that it is released parallel to MAN-TRAP by Thee Headcoatees. They follow exactly the same approach, no wonder, the Headcoats play the instrumental tracks over which Ludella Black, Kyra LaRubia, Bongo Debbie and Holly Golightly sing exactly the same songs, even if they originally come from the Ramones (“The KKK Took My Baby Away”), Rolling Stones (“Paint It Black”) or Dead Moon (“Walking On My Grave”). No, they don’t make anything like that anymore. Only from Billy Childish and his friends.
This review first appeared in Musikexpress 12/2025.