Severed Heads - Clifford 2000 (2020)

Severed Heads were more or less my favourite thing ever for a long, long time, but I lost track when everything switched to compact disc and 1991's Cuisine came out in that format alone. I couldn't really afford a CD player at the time, and I wasn't convinced by the new medium or the fervour with which friends seem to be replacing entire record collections. Cuisine and Male, the live Foetus thing, were the first albums I really wanted but which I wouldn't be able to play. Of course, I eventually caught up, only to find that Cuisine had a bit of a going through the motions feel, like an album made while trying to get to grips with some new piece of equipment - which may have been the case for all I know. 1994's Gigapus was a significant improvement, but still it felt a little as though it might otherwise all be over. Even the high points were beginning to sound a little closer to Stock, Aitken and Waterman than I usually liked.

Of course it wasn't the end, because Severed Heads carried on releasing albums on CDR, ordered by fax, and which didn't make much difference to me because I wasn't online until about 2007; and CDR has been about the worst, least reliable medium we've had, so I've always felt somewhat reluctant to pay money for one. I have forty year-old cassette tapes which still play fine - in fact most of them still play fine. Of all the CDRs I've ever burned or been given, I have a handful which remain good.

Never mind, because Clifford 2000 is a potted history of what Mr. Ellard got up to in the years following Gigapus, now preserved on four sides of durable vinyl guaranteed not to turn into Merzbow just before your record player refuses to acknowledge its existence; and it's sort of heartbreaking to discover how good this stuff was - Severed Heads at their very best, the dissonance combined with heartbreaking melodies and a certain je ne sais quoi of the bed-wettingly peculiar, unashamedly populist and yet put together upside down and always with something bolted onto the rhythm where you least expect it, so it sounds like pop without actually resembling anything you've heard before. Clifford 2000 might even be the greatest collected Heads since Come Visit the Big Bigot and is as such absolutely essential; and while we're here, I'm sure I have room on the shelves for a few more in this general spirit, should anyone feel inclined to issue more enduring versions of the Op discs or any of the others from which this material is harvested.