“High energy resolves into smaller structures/We cannot tile an infinite plane/Stand back/I stole the fire and I'm about to start smoking/I don't talk English, I talk Toyota/Both when sad and not…”

There is a certain charm—a certain je ne sais quoi—to Headache’s debut release that drew me into this album and keeps bringing me back.

The project itself is shrouded in mystery. Produced by Vegyn and released under his ‘PLZ Make it Ruins’ label earlier this year, The Head Hurts but the Heart Knows the Truth could be crudely described as a sequence of dramatic monologues splayed over a triphop beat. And the lyrics? They were prepared by a Francis Hornby Clark, yet performed by an AI voice. But this would completely undersell the album’s beauty—a beauty that I wish to lay bare for the unacquainted listener.

Let’s start with a simple question: Who is Headache?

Spotify’s artist profile offers little guidance here. It reads: “Headache” aka _____ (redacted). Either born March 3 2002, December 22 1993, or February 4 1999 … Ethnicity: unknown. Religious beliefs: unknown. Employment: unknown. Current whereabouts: right behind you ;).

So, there might be a not-so-simple answer. Headache may not be a real person. There may be an idea of Headache, some kind of Batemanian abstraction or something illusory, but when we listen to The Head Hurts, we may find that we are not—strictly speaking—listening to Headache.

The album opens with a decontextualised scene of the narrator’s post-breakup flâneuring (“I used to take my breakfast off of a mirror / Now I just walk around and stare at people in the park”). Its tone is derisive, absurd, and entirely self-critical: a reflection of the cataclysmic fallout of love lost. A bond naturally springs between us and Headache, whose fragmented introspection shifts between offerings of profound truths and idiosyncratic meditations. It is in the former (eg. “[Life’s] deep, but it’s not that deep” or “Everything is changing all the time”) that we relate to Headache, but it is in the latter that we sense the inaccessibility of the album’s full meaning (see epigraph). Perhaps there is a bit of Headache in all of us.

A word of warning to any to-be listeners: Headache gets dark. ‘Business Opportunities’, which appears to divide the album down the middle, tells the story of a failed suicide attempt. As the cadent breakbeat presses on, we are confronted with a scene of an ashamed, overdosing narrator. He is without a home, without clothes, and painfully aware of his inability to tell the truth. It is visceral and laden with pathos, standing in stark contrast to the phantasmagorical episodes of the preceding tracks. Although the bard is a figment of AI, the recount is undeniably candid. You can hear a faltering of the narrator’s voice in “I felt very, very cold” and feel the full-bodied expression of self-contempt in “I guess that says a lot about me, doesn’t it? God, it was miserable”.

However, it is in situating its roots at such depths that The Head Hurts reaches for the heavens, and it is within the back half of ‘Business Opportunities’ that the album’s central themes break the horizon. The warm pads in ‘Truisms 4 Dummies’ suggest a newfound optimism, which takes full flight in the driving, heady ‘Mission Impossible III’. It becomes clear that The Head Hurts is an evocation of love. Indeed, Headache’s noble truth is “that love is the only thought and pain is the only feeling”. While I find the album to be life-affirming when considered in its totality, I find that love is accorded primacy to a fault at times (“Remember, you’re nobody till somebody loves you”). As Donnie Darko reminds Kitty Farmer, such absolutism does not account for other things, namely “the whole spectrum of human emotion”.

But I don’t think that you need to agree with the album in its entirety to appreciate it. In fact, I would argue that it is so deliberately enigmatic that one might not be able to understand the album in its entirety. After countless re-listens, I feel like I am only breaking the surface of The Head Hurts. I’ve come to suspect that the album is non-linear, for it is a certain Monica in ‘Business Opportunities’ (Track 4) that discovers the overdosing narrator and later sleeps with him, and a certain Monica in ‘The Beginning of the End’ (Track 1) who commands the narrator to cease contact with her. But I’m discovering new things about this album all the time, like the Edenic double-entendre in “I ate the apple and lost myself to paradise”, or the fact that Monica may not be a real person but a, well… moniker. Many mysteries remain unresolved though. Why is mixing “the blue with the yellow” so crucial? And why should people start trying to be ‘hot’ in lieu of ‘cool’? Why not try to be silly instead??

Maybe the album—to steal a line from Headache—is deep, but it’s not that deep. It might not be for everyone, but I trust that an adventurous listener can find beauty at its surface or depth. Vegyn’s production is truly top shelf, piecing together something far greater than the sum of its parts. Headache is poetic, prophetic, proleptic. Headache is a project that I unreservedly claim is like nothing I have ever heard before. If you’ve sustained your attention this far, I implore you to find a quiet spot and some headphones, and crawl into the womb of Headache’s monologuing. And if you don’t, I will.

90

Joe Negrine

17 October 2023