The Kids Are All Square: This Is Hip!

Thee Headcoats’ second album of 1990 was released on Childish’s own Hangman label, and was hard to come by until a 2011 reissue. It’s more polished and musically ambitious than its better-known companion Heavens To Murgatroid, Even! It’s Thee Headcoats (Already), adding piano, keyboards, and even accordion to their tool kit and giving the songs muscular if still basically primitive production. Thee Headcoatees, Childish’s three-member female singing group, show up here and there. Lyrically, he exhibits a weird and somewhat un-PC obsession with cowboys, Indians, and Eskimos on multiple tracks (“Davey Crockett,” “Cowboys Are Square,” “Pocahontas Was Her Name,” “Nanook Of The North”), but Childish as wounded romantic is also strongly represented (“All My Feelings Denied,” “I Can Destroy All Your Love”). The key, as always, is the strength of the group’s jackhammer garage rock.