Boxing the Compass Haircut 100

Boxing the Compass

Haircut 100

June 19, 2026 

If you are a Baby Boomer and you recall the early days of MTV and the New Wave, then you're familiar with the UK band Haircut 100. In February, 1982, they released their debut LP, Pelican West, which soon charted in the UK. A single from that LP, 'Love Plus One,' was in heavy rotation on MTV that spring and summer. The band were among the most successful of the early 1980s, and seemed headed for an enduring presence on the Top 40 charts.

 

Efforts to record a followup LP foundered amid disputes with lead singer and songwriter Nick Heyward, who left the band in 1983, thereafter focused on a solo career. With Marc Fox on lead vocals, Paint and Paint was released in 1984 and while in my opinion a very good LP, it didn't achieve the success of Pelican West and the group soon disbanded, becoming a 'what if' motif for the New Wave and the UK's reggae-based sounds of the early 1980s.

 

But now, after some years in preparation and a number of delays, Haircut 100 have returned with a new LP, Boxing the Compass, released on June 19. Featuring Heyward on vocals and guitar, Les Nemes on bass, Blair Cunningham on drums, and Graham Jones on guitar, Boxing the Compass provides a perfect capturing of the spirit and sound of those early LPs. Its 10 tracks have the poppy, upbeat sound of Pelican West, and certainly will spark nostalgia among Boomers and MTV fans.

Boxing the Compass is available on CD, as an mp3 download, as a vinyl LP, and of course, on Spotify. If you want a sense of the LP's approach to music, the early release track, 'The Unloving Plum,' sets the scene as well as anything I can tell you. 

 

My fave track on Boxing the Compass is the final one, 'A Wonderful Life,' with its power pop sensibility and big horn sound. Nothing like it on the Spotify Top 40........

A recent, lengthy interview with the band is available here; interestingly, they hint at a followup LP. I am on board with that......