Sean Henry Head (White)

"HEAD" is an album of slacker rock anthems for downtown loners and hometown heshers. The album features tape-warbled acoustics and overdriven electrics. Sean Henry weaves warped samples and saturated trip-hop drums into a bold sonic collage. Often groovy, often melodic. Sometimes hushed, and sometimes howling. It’s an album of existential earworms. The writing and recording process was all-consuming. “It was an obsession,” Sean Henry says. The obsession lasted over two years. He set out with a clear inspiration—a series of near-death experiences, and the downward spiral they triggered. Against this emotional backdrop, Sean Henry began writing "HEAD". He planned to produce a record of his descent into madness. The album he ended up with tells a different story. HEAD is hopeful, even when misfortune lurks just outside the frame. Track one wakes up into a dream—within its first lines, we’re already out of our bodies, soaring toward the ceiling like the figure on the album cover. The tracks that follow encompass a wide scope. “Jamproof” is a bass driven groove with plinking piano and crackling vinyl. “Burn It Out” is a twangy hometown banger with guest vocals from Lowertown’s, Olivia O. The album finishes with a cover of “In Heaven,” an eerie ballad famously performed by a tiny woman inside a radiator in David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Like the film, this record presents a dark world with an optimistic sheen. One of the album’s most memorable lines is the “Jamproof” refrain, “Nothing’s gonna get me down,” sung in a slightly unsettling whisper. On the eve of his first single release in four years, Sean Henry’s NYC apartment burnt down. Thank God for his persistence. Out 8/30 via Double Double Whammy and AMATEUR MUSIC.