Like most bands worth shouting about, The Heads seemed to exist outside of their times. Everybody Knows We Got Nowhere, their second album, was released in 2000 and arrived during the era of superstar DJs, ambient mood music and hordes of painfully sincere acoustic types.
What better occasion for a brain-frying assault of heavy psychedelia and distorted garage fuzz? The twin guitars of Simon Price and Paul Allen ensure that everything keeps ripping along at speed, tearing off hefty chunks of The Stooges, Sabbath and Sonic Youth on the way. It all reaches a thumping conclusion on disc one with Long Gone, a monster jam that finds the sweet spot between Hawkwind and Pussy Galore.
Not that The Heads lacked subtlety or variation, as evinced by the backward loops of My My or the hazy abstraction of Kraut Byrds. The second CD features a dozen extras, mostly from BBC radio sessions for Mark Radcliffe and John Peel.