It was into the middle of that world the not-so-singalong The Magical World of the Strands appeared. Yes, there’s a place for it in the history of Britpop. It is of that magisterial era—but in a more sublime way than Oasis or Blur were ever capable of. Firstly, it’s a quiet record, full of acoustic guitars. There are some Love-like hooks and refrains, but none of that band’s frenetic energy. Good Lord, half the songs are in ¾ time. And while Oasis was releasing overlong singles in the nineties, the centrepiece here, a seven and half minute acoustic number written by John Head, “Loaded Man,” is a kind of even more bittersweet take on Love’s “Signed D.C.” —a tale of addiction and failure. That the track after it, “Hocken’s Hey,” opens with banjo and acoustic guitar is equally telling about the album’s reception.

In the 1990s, while audiences were out buying “Man my dog’s been itchin’,/ itchin’ in the kitchen,” played on electric guitars through Marshall amps, Michael Head was writing rain-addled Liverpudlian waltzes with a string quartet—that describes the album’s best song, “Something Like You”. Included on The Olde World is a heart-breaking recording of the string quartet’s part of that song. Can anyone imagine Oasis releasing just the cello bit from “Wonderwall” as a track?

Head was on an artistic roll in the 90s and from an ideal perspective his sixties-inspired introspective songs couldn’t have asked for a better, more receptive decade. But the 90s weren’t ideal: they were, in the record-selling world, laddish and boorish (listen to anything by Weezer to see what I mean). Worse, perhaps the timing for Head’s songwriting has never been right. There are moments on The Magical World of the Strands that are sweet, in multiple senses of that word. How many Britpop albums can you say that about? But then Head is more Nick Drake than John Lennon, more “Northern Sky” than “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey.”

Shack meandered through the noughties, releasing two very good albums – Here’s Tom With the Weather (2003) and The Corner of Miles and Gil ( 2006) – but these just aren’t as formidable or rewarding as the earlier work. The Magical World of the Strands, now complemented with The Olde World, stands out in a curious, sort of sad, and often hard to follow discography. Perhaps, like his hero Arthur Lee, whose Forever Changes took decades to catch on, Michael Head is someone for whom only the future can offer an audience.





EVAN JONES is Partisan's foreign correspondent. His most recent book is Paralogues (2012). His work has appeared in The Guardian, TLS, PN Review, and elsewhere.



