Thee Headshrinkers Announce Debut Album “Head Cheese” & Release “Sunday Driver” Single

If there was ever an ad for joinmyband.com, then Thee Headshrinkers story is it. Rob (stocking) and Gino (balaclava) found each other there and started practicing as a duo in a mate’s garage sandwiched between rusty bicycles and an old MG. They wanted to sound like The Jesus & Mary Chain. It didn’t quite work out that way. Planning for his imminent move to Hastings, UK not to be a lonely one Stiv (dolls head) also found the couple, who by this time thought a human drummer would be a nice addition, through the aforementioned musician matchmaking site. The road they travel is littered with youthful memories of bands across the world and through the ages. Being in a band is THE adventure, a gang of misfits you want to be part of. Practice rooms being raided by armed police because there was a starter pistol modification factory next door and being coined off stage after an ill-judged booking are just a couple of their whimsical recollections.

Rob, primarily a lover of Northern Soul and reggae, spent his youth playing in mod and ska bands and spent one summer travelling across Europe in an ambulance playing squats and community centres with crust punks Rites Of Man. It was never the plan for him to be chief lyricist and singer, he just did it until “they found someone better” but with subject matters from driving your motorbike at night and switching off the lights to not letting go of past beefs and resentments, it’s going be a long wait. When asked for band inspirations. The answer is immediate. The Eighties Match Box B-Line Disaster, The Fall and the Sex Pistols. And ambition? “To play the 100 Club.” Can’t say fairer than that. They have all the raw power too. Songs driven by the bass line, with no middle eight, making repetition an art form. Vocals spit and sneer but touch on the pop sensibilities of The Mary Chain that Rob & Gino first wished to emulate. Gino turns his Vox Phantom into a full fuzz incendiary device, all held together by Stiv’s fast and loose garage beat. 

From playing 20 capacity basement gigs, 2024 has seen the masked crusaders star rising with promoters and venues across the country asking for their attendance. This debut album, Head Cheese (that will be released via Property Of The Lost on the 29th November), does what every debut should. A sum up of the band right here, right now. Recorded in three days at Ranscombe Studios in Rochester, UK with Jim Riley at the helm. Twelve tracks delivered, most not reaching the three-minute frontier of abrasive garage energy. Today the music world gets to sample its first taste of the album’s bitter sweet charms with the lead single, Sunday Driver, which is “about a man who only feels alive behind the wheel of his killing machine” and storms along like Mark E Smith if he was staring in 1970s car gore fest Death Race 2000. It’s raw, frantic and oozing petrol guzzling charm. Thee Headshrinkers will be roaring into your town, and then your life, very soon. And if you don’t like it well then that’s just Head Cheese.