The latest release from a band firing on all cylinders!
There can’t be as many musicians out there as prolific as Billy Childish! Since his early records with punk outcasts, The Pop Rivets, Billy has released well over a hundred albums with a plethora of collaborators. Add to this his work as painter, photographer and film maker and you have one of punk’s most enigmatic characters. Whether it be with The Buff Medways, The Spartan Dreggs, or Thee Headcoats, he has delighted fans with scuzzy blues riffs, clever thought-provoking lyrics and a massive influx of good old rock n roll fun. Last year’s Thee Headcoats wonderfully titled ‘The Sherlock Holmes Rhythm ’n’ Beat Vernacular’ was a fantastic record nicely complemented by Thee Headcoatees ‘Man-Trap’ especially on the two contrasting versions of ‘Modern Terms of Abuse’.
For brand new album ‘House on Fire’, Billy is reunited with his wife, Nurse Julie, and Wolf Howard as CTMF for the first time since 2023’s ‘Failure Not Success’.
Opening with ‘The Magpie’s Flown’, we are in familiar territory with distorted semi spoken vocals backed by a stomping beat and a hypnotic fuzz induced guitar motif. The song sees Billy in a reflective mode on his upbringing in Chatham. In his own words; “The song is about the local landscape, institutions, and how war on nations and people seems to be the way humans do stuff.”
A cover of The Yardbirds’ ‘Shapes of Things’ follows, and is a cracking version, especially with the full-blown band freak out mid-section. ‘Bridge Burner’ returns to buzzsaw guitar territory as Billy alienates all around. Delving back into history ‘Trafalgar’ concerns a sailor pondering his existence as HMS Victory sails into battle.
‘Beneath You Touch’ continues the relentless pace but is enchanced by Nurse Julie’s backing vocals. Julie also takes the reins on the excellent ‘Traces of You’, with her glorious harmonies cutting across the electrifying hazy guitars echoing the best of the Nuggets’ era girl groups. With The Saints’ ‘Untitled’, the band up the ante, Julie’s uplifting vocals adding a new dimension to the song.
Billy returns to vocal duties for the ‘Keep Mojave Weird’ as the band channel sixties sonic warriors The Seeds whilst he sings about UFOs and the other oddities of the desert. A great song that lasts just long enough to make it into an earworm. Billy says it’s “about the road trip I took with my family to the Southwest in 2025. It mentions three UFOs which I saw over Pioneertown, the lone phone box they’ve got in the desert, The Mojave Indians weaving Blue Flax, and Captain Beefheart’s liking of Bo Diddley. (Sky Saxon once told me that Thee Headcoats played the way The Seeds should have.)”
‘Blues That Kills’ continues the classic chainsaw onslaught with added feedback that will have Jack White salivating. ‘House on Fire’ is Julie’s revenge song and has a rhythmic pull that drags you along in its wake. Billy tells us that the title track “was written by Julie. Style-wise Julie is a big fan of the rolling blues tunes of Mr. Airplane Man, a group The A-Lines, (Julie guitar) shared the same bill with on a number of occasions. Initially she meant the song to be an ‘I love my man’ type ditty, but as it progressed, it lurched into a revenge number.”
‘Have You Seen the Devil?’ is a gloriously pulsating journey that never lets its frenetic pace subside. ‘A Surprise to You (No Surprise to Me)’ sees the guitars replaced by a magnificent swirling organ, which would make Alan Price proud.
‘The Rope Puller’ returns us to darker territories, before the album ends with ‘Searching from the Losing Place’ which consolidates the feel of the preceding songs into one finale hurrah. Billy’s vocal delivery is tempered by Julie’s harmonies whilst guitars crash around them, making for a majestic end to album.
Once again, Billy Childish and CTMF have made a highly enjoyable album, that whilst not groundbreaking, has sufficient variety to entice casual listeners alongside the more ardent Childish devotees.
Out on 27th March 2026 via Damaged Goods Records, pre-order your copy of ‘House On Fire‘ on CD or vinyl HERE Also released on the same day is a four-song 7” EP featuring ‘Keep Mojave Weird’, taken from the album, plus three exclusive non-album tracks – pre-order it HERE
- The Magpie’s Flown
- Shapes of Things
- Bridge Burner
- Trafalgar
- Beneath You Touch
- Traces of You
- Untitled
- Keep Mojave Weird
- Blues That Kills
- House on Fire
- Have You Seen the Devil?
- A Surprise to You (No Surprise to Me)
- The Rope Puller
- Searching From the Losing Place
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