Sorry for the absence here...Casa Nada temporarily felled for a while by influenza.
I’ve featured bands from Iowa before (Iowa Comps I & II). Iowa has always been a fertile breeding ground for driving pop bands. Here’s the one & only album from the incredible Iowa quartet Head Candy. They played a heartlands-style medium/loud, complex guitar rock similar to Television or Dumptruck, kinda psychedelic in texture & lyrics.
Guitarists Mike Sangster & Doug Roberson came out of two other great Iowa units, the Hollowmen & the Dangtrippers respectively. Sangster's vocals veer radically between uneasy tension & mellow smoothness in such a way that Head Candy's songs portray both a world-weary callousness of songs like “Soul Grinder” & a vulnerable empathy of “In the Night Kitchen”. Starcaster also features an uncomplicated production comprised of grinding guitars & fuzzy vocals layered over a firm rhythm section. One of my choices is the William Gibson inspired cyberpunk "Mona Lisa Overdrive".
Heady Candy are: Mike Sangster – vocal, guitar, & tapes; Doug Roberson – guitar & tapes; Jim Vallet – bass; & Jim Viner – drums.
Side 1 –
Soul Grinder
In the Night Kitchen
At the Controls
Words to Live By
Part of the Earth
Watching the Suns Trail
Side 2 –
Sideways Laughing
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Rocket Transfer Warehouse
Invitation to a Beheading
Black Spirits & White
Starcaster
Enjoy,
NØ