I discovered Headache just after the release of their first album “The Head Hurts but the Heart Knows the Truth” in 2023, when I had heard one of their songs playing in my local vinyl shop (the best place to discover new music to be fair). Headache is an experimental music project with the instrumentals by British music producer Vegyn and lyrics written by Francis Hornsby Clark although performed by a text to speech application. The music is hard to describe, what first comes across as the ramblings of a madman soon begins to form a clear stream of consciousness that digs deep into some pretty serious topics like love, loss and the general human experience which is interesting as the robotic voice doesn’t seem to make the words less raw or less human.
I have always been a fan of spoken word but this fits into a more niche subsection of the genre. It reminds me of some more mainstream spoken word songs, in particular one that shares the same robotic text to speech voice being “The Man That Married a Robot” by The 1975. In addition to this, “One of Those Things” by Tom Rosenthal and Paul Haworth, and “a meeting at an oak tree” by Mura Masa and Ned Green also share the same general air of Headache although these are both performed by humans.
As it stands they currently have two albums, “The Head Hurts but the Heart Knows” (which I have already mentioned) is their first, and “Thank You For Almost Everything”, which was released last week. I was afraid their latest album would lose the charm and uniqueness of the first, but both seem to have the same vibe both lyrically and music wise.
If I were to pick a favourite from both albums, I’d go with “Truisms 4 Dummies” from their first, with my favourite lyric being “At this point I feel like I’m almost 100% pure angel”, and from their latest, “This Joy is Ours” with the incredibly relatable lyrics; “ I’m not crying because I’m sad, I’m crying because I don’t want to be here.”.
What’s really interesting is that there are certain lyrics that carry themselves throughout the album, making appearances in different tracks with different contexts. While I understand that all music is art, Headache feels the closest to the art I’m used to, if you have a minute I’d defo recommend listening to some of their tracks.
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