After fronting the revered-but-unsuccessful Pale Fountains, Shack and the Strands alongside his guitarist brother John, Michael Head was once dubbed “Britain’s greatest songwriter (recognise him?)” by the NME. The Magical World of the Strands, from 1997, is a particular lost classic: gently psychedelic, Love-influenced songs about heroin addiction, which moved one Guardian writer to tears. Hailing from the same sessions, this sublime set contains 10 songs (and alternate takes) that never made it on to the album. There’s a fuller It’s Harvest Time, a stunningly orchestrated Something Like You and an achingly acoustic Glynys and Jacqui, featuring the haunting whisper, “I’m in a race but not against time.” Elsewhere, a familiar desperate beauty drives the unheard Poor Jill, and the surging, Beatlesesque The Olde World is another for the Head brothers’ pile of hits-that-should-have been. Perhaps the most mystifying of those original omissions (later re-recorded by Shack) is the exquisitely troubled Fin, Sophie, Bobby and Lance, which serves to underline the Heads’ embarrassment of riches.
