Screaming Headless Torsos — 2005

For a while it seemed that Fiuczynski’s Headless Torsos were going to continue without the Screaming of Dean Bowman. An instrumental release and some loose tidbits on the site with Freedom Bremner surfaced but now the second Screaming Headless Torsos studio-album has materialised with Dean on it.

I was really happy to catch them live last year. The live-album set my expectations very, very high as that recording caught the band on fire. The show was everything I hoped for and in a way even more, as it also made the instrumental Amandala much more fun, as it never really grabbed me until I saw percussionist Daniel Sadownick play, for instance. Apart from the CD, simply dubbed 2005, there’s a double DVD too to show what I mean. Two shows in two towns (New York and Paris) representing two era’s (1996 and 2004), both professionally shot and great documents of the band’s virile energy on stage and if you never got the chance to see them perform it might be even more interesting to see this. If you did see them it’s great to relive some of the experience. But I digress.

The second studio album has some serious competition from two albums that I have played many times over the years. It would take time to make these new tunes have the history and the impact of those old favourites. Just For Now was already on the live-album and to hear a slower and cleaner version here requires some adaptation on my behalf. Newer songs like ska-ish Woe To The Conquered and anti-SUV anthem SUV SOB leave nothing to be wished for though. Dean’s energetic vocals are still quite unique and those alone almost lift this whole band from the jazz/rock pigeonhole. This band isn’t about scales and meters, it’s about funk and they ‘rawk’, to use some webspeak. There are also three songs with Freedom on vocals, but that doesn’t really change much actually, the energy remains the same.

This band should play a couple of the (way too) many summerfestivals that are coming up. The rock audience should take notice of this funky-ass outfit. In the meanwhile I advice everybody to pick up this CD as well as the DVD, this is great, uplifting music to make you happy on the sunny days that are hopefully ahead of us this summer.