As A Clifford, I Proudly Live In The Past

I found out this evening that a few months ago Tom Ellard called quits on his awesome, pioneering, and long running electronic / industrial band Severed Heads. While Ellard continues to do video projects and other work under his own name, the demise of Severed Heads ends 28 years of audio experimentation ranging from weird sound collage to peculiar pop music. Like Andrew Eldritch's rejection of Sisters of Mercy's classification as a Goth band, Ellard never really did quite cotton to the Industrial genre he helped create. Yet, even with the jump to more dancey synthpop on "Bad Mood Guy," he never could quite ditch the rivethead fanbase. And even the more recent work still maintained that wonderful Severed Heads penchant for weirdness. If you've never heard Severed Heads, that's a shame. I feel sorry for you.


Though TE exhibits a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards much of his early work, having bought my first Severed Heads album when I was 13, I forever remain a huge fan. The classic releases "Come Visit The Big Bigot" and "Clifford Darling, Please Don't Live In The Past" are still among my favorite albums, and Severed Heads is a band whose work I always return to. My hope is that at some point in the future, like so many other bands, Severed Heads will have a reunion. Perhaps Tom Ellard will have a reunion with himself, or maybe he'll dig up some combination of Richard Fielding, Garry Bradbury, Paul Deering, Stephen Jones and/or Andrew Wright and have a proper reunion. Who knows, maybe they could tour as the opener for yet another reincarnation of Pink Floyd?