Angelhead

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Angelhead were an English rock band, active from 1987 until 1991. Their line-up consisted of singer/guitarist Jude Rawlins, lead guitarist Neil Gardner, bassist Richard "Coey" Cole, and keyboardist/percussionist Mat Hook. The band are best remembered for their 1989 album Rain Goddess, and for their early recordings, which many cite as a major influence on the later British music scene "dreampop" or Shoegazing. Angelhead themselves always distanced themselves from any such label, although the soundscapes for which they became known can be detected in many groups, including Ride and Chapterhouse.

[edit] Career

Angelhead's recorded output was prolific, but the band did everything they could to evade easy categorisation. The common themes were escape and longing, but Rawlins seemed even at this early stage to be striving for more than straightforward teen angst. The song ‘’Yesterday and Most of Today’’, recorded in 1987, was about teen suicide, but rather than the usual it was an angry and defiant emotional exploration, inspired by an actual personal loss. The slow, brooding, repetitive nature of the track seemed to owe much to Public Image Limited (the band also covered PiL’s “The Flowers of Romance” around the same time). With hindsight, the track clearly represents the musical evolutionary from the dark post-punk of PiL, Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division et al, and the later, fey soundscapes of the Shoegazing scene of the late Eighties and early Nineties, predating the release of Ride’s “Drive Blind” by almost three years.

In 1989, Angelhead recorded ‘’Rain Goddess’’. A dark, experimental work, it seemed that the band were turning away from their indie roots, moving towards a more avant-garde sound. The album was poorly received, many previously supportive critics attacking it’s pervasive nihilism, and blatant disregard for the band’s previous signature guitar sound. Littered with drug references, artistic homage, and uncompromising in the extreme, ‘’Rain Goddess’’, whilst certainly a brave artistic statement was just too demanding for a listening public then preoccupied with Madchester. The band stood by it, but never recovered their commercial potential. Mat Hook left in July 1989 to do a psychology degree. Rawlins, Gardner and Cole continued as a three piece. Although their reputation as a live act went from strength to strength, their subsequent recordings lacked the fierce agenda of their earlier work. Problems with management and labels overtook them, compounded by Rawlins’ increasing reliance on drugs and alcohol. They disbanded in 1991., after the collapse of the Rough Trade label. The split was announced at the Slough Festival, which that year was (coincidently?) co-headlined by Ride and Curve. Jude Rawlins subsequently formed Subterraneans with former Wave guitarist Carl Homer.