Headsticks – The Best Thing On TV (2025)
If Headsticks were a television show, The Best Thing On TV would be their peak-season box set binge: raw, raging, and relentlessly replayable. This 12-track, 40-minute masterclass in genre-fusion sees the folk-punk-rock misfits push their sonic manifesto to new heights, swinging wildly (and brilliantly) between fury and finesse.
From the moment opener ‘Pantomime’ bursts through the speakers with its riotous riff and theatrical bite, it’s clear we’re in for a wild ride. Like the best politically charged punk, it lands its punches with style, wit, and the occasional pantomime “oh no it isn’t!” moment that only this band could pull off without losing an ounce of grit. That balance, between righteous anger and knowing humour, is the Headsticks’ hallmark, and it’s never sounded sharper.
‘Keyboard Warriors’ follows, a bruising anthem for the digital age, sneering at anonymous trolls from the safety of power chords and rallying cries. It’s classic Headsticks: barbed, bold, and bursting with personality. The beauty lies in the details, like the offhand line “I don’t own a winter’s coat, and it’s getting bloody cold!” which lands somewhere between bleak social realism and gallows humour. It’s punk with a poet’s heart and a busker’s soul.
Yet for all their fire and fury, The Best Thing On TV isn’t all boots and brass. ‘On Top Of The World’ offers a moment of acoustic reflection, stripped-back, melancholic, and intimate. It’s the emotional core of the album, a reminder that even the loudest bands have something to say in a whisper. Later, ‘There’s No One Left’ tugs at the heartstrings with layered brass, soaring backing vocals from Esther Brennan, and a swelling arrangement that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Levellers deep cut.
The band walk the tightrope between satire and sermon within their songwriting. ‘God Song’ imagines a divine chinwag that, naturally, ends up sounding more like a pint with a working-class sage than a sermon from the mount. There’s rage, sure, but always a twinkle in the eye. ‘Ashes’ and ‘(Don’t Spoil) The Apocalypse’ are heavier affairs, loaded with bleak prophecy and gallows humour. The latter, which inspired the album’s title, conjures up the image of humanity watching its destruction, channel-surfing through collapse with a bag of crisps.
Headsticks aren’t content to sit in one genre’s corner with their music. Their self-coined “Revolutionary Punk Roots Rock’n’Roll” is a swirling soup of influences, the agitprop attack of The Clash, the folk sincerity of Merry Hell, and the crowd-ready stomp of Ferocious Dog. ‘Each And Every Day’ is a toe-tapper laced with defiance, while ‘Dark Waters’ veers into apocalyptic folk territory, its lyrics soaked in unease and resignation.
Even ‘St George’s Infirmary’, one of the more subdued moments, bristles with underlying tension, using folk-rock arrangements to wrap around tales of decay and disillusion. But rather than close with a grim finale, Headsticks pull a classic bait-and-switch with ‘There’s A Parsnip On The Pool Table’, a funky, playful romp that tips its cap to Manchester’s finest smiles. It’s ludicrous, joyous, and entirely necessary, a closing credit scene after the documentary of doom.
What makes The Best Thing On TV so compelling is its refusal to be pinned down. It’s an album that demands to be felt as much as heard, shouted along with, danced to, wept over, and laughed at. With every album, Headsticks climb higher, and here they’ve reached a new summit: tighter, braver, and more ambitious than ever.
Find out more about Headsticks on their official website, Facebook and Spotify.
This artist was sent to us by Obsidian PR.
