Deerstalking with Billy Childish and the Downliners Sect

Even though Billy Childish has alone been able to record more under his own name than most bands over an entire career, the Medway native found himself amongst a trio that he dubbed Thee Headcoats. And from the late '80s through the early '00s, the band easily dispensed the rawest take on garage even amidst its ballooning brethren by the end of the '90s. The Downliners Sect, who hadn't recorded music since the '70s, aren't necessarily the first band that one would have dreamed up an affiliation with Childish's trio, but in 1996, the two groups collaborated on two discs, the first offering being an album entitled Deerstalking Men.

The impetus for both groups, though, does have a base in '60s revved up RnB, which the Downliner's arguably helped disseminate in the UK. And although, the band didn't really impact the charts in the way its beat combo brethren would, the band has been embraced by legions of garage aficionados as a sort of pre-Nuggets Brit sign post. Even with that and the admiration that Childish no doubt possesses for the combo, the aural similarities don't always come across in the music the bands' produce independent of each other. This, date though, finds everyone playing a Billy Childish garage reduction, that has as much to do with Bo Diddley as it does with the Stones at their most reckless.

With everyone under the direction of Childish, the group goes in on a few covers, some stuff that had already or would soon show up on other Headcoats' albums in addition to a few offerings from the Sect's catalog. Of course, "Cowboys are Square" - which I think was Headcoats track that would later be gussed up with Thee Mighty Caesars, but I might be incorrect considering there's almost no way to completely track the recordings of Childish - takes a humorous look at playing cowboys and Indians with as much humor and political winking as could be held by the song. As if that weren't enough, though, it also sports one of the most memorable and singable choruses on the disc.

Most notable are the two covers from Washington State's the Sonics. "Strychnine," which opens the disc and is thought to be a track that vouches for the group's love of LSD, is given a pretty straight read. And while the drawl that Childish sports is uniquely his own that seems to be the only divergent quality that this offering has when contrasted with the original. A few songs later, "The Witch" shows up. And while not a druggy track, it still sports the same sort of skuzzy guitar sound that the Sonics pioneered up there amongst the pine trees. The weird thing about all of this is the fact that the Downliners Sect were contemporaries of the Sonics. So why work with that material?

As a final note, though, the inclusion of "Why Don't You Smile Now" is an interesting addition. The track which originally appeared on the Sect's '66 The Rock Sect's In was penned by Lou Reed and John Cale. That's just a footnote, though. And while that is an interesting fact, reading about the album is most assuredly less entertaining than listening in.