DAMAGED GOODS 14th November 2025
Steaming out of Kent, Billy Childish’s Thee Headcoats carry a torch for rock and roll. Rudely basic in construction, sturdy in execution, a study in guitars and drums, he yells the lyrics urgently atop the all-important beat.
Childish is a ball of energy and Thee Headcoats is just one of his projects but his love is focused here if the volume of output is anything to go by. Centred on Billy Childish and Bruce Brand, the drummer, the band are dedicated to garage sounds. Having dropped a couple of albums a year through the nineteen nineties, they took a break and this is the second album since 2023’s revival. Not that Billy’s other projects don’t form a spiritual continuity, even if an accurate family tree of the bands would blow anyone’s mind. Delightfully, having booked recording studio time for an offshoot EP recording, Billy said “why not make an album” and they did, in two days, issued as the previous album in 2023. This set was equally quick, with time left over for their female counterparts, The Headcoatees, to knock a set out as well (link). Nothing is overthought in execution and the spirit is fun.
“If people don’t like it, it must be good” he sings on the second track, a motto to live by. Loud and sharp round the edges, this is Chatham garage rock. If you have any doubt as to the dedication to the garage ethos, try ‘Dearest Darling’, which would not be out of place on Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation. Or the wild Troggs sound of ‘The Baby Who Mutilated Everybody’s Heart’. Or the jitter dance of ‘Sally Sensation’, all distortion and Kinks chords. Elsewhere, things are more explicitly English but no less dedicated to the direct. ‘The Friends of The Buff Medways Fanciers Association’ refers to another Childish band but also a traditional breed of chicken and is spoken in outrageously Kent tones, somewhere between Vivian Stanshall and Dr Feelgood.
This is crudely fun, tipping the hat to any number of reference points, disposable but a joy whenever you play it. Rock and roll fun, basic but full of history if you hear it and a paean of love for the genre.
Our review of Thee Headcoatees is here:
Thee Headcoatees – ‘Man-Trap’ – “vital, stripped down primal rock”