Blogs eh? Tomorrow’s new music today, or something like that. Well, in this case we can lay some claim to that, because here’s The Milk and their new single Chip The Kids. Does that title sound familiar? It may well do as we first posted about the song in September 2010 and streamed the demo in December of the same year (when we named them as One to Watch in 2011 - nearly a year too early). Now nearly two years on Chip The Kids is revamped, rebooted and precedes the bands album Tales From The Thames Delta, due in September.
Chip The Kids is the song the band just had to release as a single. To not do so would be a crime against pop. It’s an urgent disco guitar smacker that surges with soulful triumph. Frankly if you listen to this track and don’t feel gloriously alive then you’re almost certainly dead. No, not almost certainly are - you are. 100% dead.
The Milk will be taking their Stax referencing sound out on the road again on their biggest UK tour to date this winter, including a date at Shepherds Bush Empire in London and for those who are local to Breaking More Waves towers, a date at Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms (see you there). When they play this song be prepared to quite literally jump for the sky with every single person in the room – you have been warned.
If you’ve ever felt cheated out of a brighter future The Milk’s new single Every Time We Fight, due on June 24 is the song for you. Full of the bands adrenalising soul sound, impassioned vocals and irresistible hooks it also features a video shot in a working mens club in Dagenham by Inbetweeners star (and long-time fan of The Milk) James Buckley. The film has a back story of a factory closing and how the people then come together as a community. Buckley himself plays the worker who rallies them together. Written at the time of the London riots, the song captures the spirit of that, but can also be seen as a more personal reflection on a relationship.
The Milk have already completed one huge UK tour this year and are out on the road again till the end of June. They really are a superb band live; their set has more in common with a DJ set than a typical live rock band, with all the songs flowing in to one another to create one gradually building party. Our only disappointment? That to date The Milk have still not released a song we mentioned back in September 2010 called Chip The Kids. If you think Every Time We Fight is good (and it is... really good) Chip The Kids could take things to a whole new level.
The cold wet streets of Camden are awash with drunken hordes tonight, but that’s just a typical weekend here. Thrown into that mix is a bunch of wristband wearing music seekers who are staggering their way between the pubs, clubs and venues of north London’s pleasure streets. Yes, you know it can only be the Camden Crawl.
The legendary multi-venue multi-gig festival may be the oldest swinger in town these days, imitated by many others that have arguably become more prestigious (Brighton’s Great Escape now lays claim to being the UK’s biggest and best of these sorts) but the Camden Crawl still packs some weight. Maybe it’s because of expert advance planning, maybe because of the double-dip recession or maybe that this year’s bill doesn’t hold so many must-sees as previous years, but the criticisms past of over long queues and crammed in likes sardines venues don’t transpire.
“This is really unhealthy to be playing this early,” announces frontman Denis Smith of Imperial Leisure for their 1pm set in The Wheelbarrow. You wouldn’t think it though. The 8-piece, brass wielding band may be crammed on to a tiny stage but they give it everything. It may be as subtle as a Katie Price underwear photo shoot, but their mix of sweaty shouty ska-rap-rock mix goes down a treat, especially with the two loons dressed as dancing monkeys po-going in the front row.
Up at the other end of town hard-touring Peace take to the stage and look every ounce the indie band. There are floppy fringes, fur collars, leather jackets, converse boots, skinny jeans and pale boyishness a-plenty and some half decent tunes that flourish with a crowd that is not yet too drunk to pay attention. They’re followed by Elle King who imports her songs about heartbreak, love and crap towns in Ohio with gravelly country vocals, banjos and trumpet sounds and who is gorgeously affecting.
Destroying the ideology of the Camden Crawl, a short bus ride rather than a long walk takes us to Koko where The Milk are packing as much as they can into their day with three shows. With this half hour set they’re like DJ’s with guitars – there’s no break for applause, just a continuous stream of music until the end. The Milk can play. They don’t need to soak their sound in reverb to hide their inadequacies like so many bedroom groups today. Instead there’s tight playing and great songs full of call and response vocals, slabs of 60’s r ‘n’ b influences and straining soul. Their best song Chip The Kids doesn’t even get an airing and yet they still sound on top of their game.
The Crawl is not all about indoor gig venues though. Camden Gardens hosts the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Outdoor Arena whilst down at the Roundhouse a tiny dome canopy has been erected on the outside terrace. It’s here amongst the palms, patio stonework and over large sunshade that the Melodica Melody and Me coax the sun out for a short while with their twee folk sound and We Were Evergreen charm with cute xylophone led French pop melodies. However by the time it’s over it’s become as cold as Christmas and the warmth of a grotty Camden boozer seems very welcome.
It’s at the Monarch where we get a dose of Lo(ish)-Fi indie guitar work from Fear of Men. Vocalist Jess sings some lazy but lovely pop melodies like The Primitives or The Shop Assistants with slippers on and it’s all quite pleasantly appealing. The addition of a new female backing vocalist fleshes out the bands nostalgic sound somewhat and it’s only a lack of interaction with the audience that lessens the groups regency a little.
By now things are starting to get a little messy and Polarbear, Brum’s answer to Scroobius Pip, has to battle with the chattering drunk masses in the Earl of Camden. There may not be a raised stage but Polarbear creates one with a mix of spoken word, beats and on one track the use of the word bum-hole repeatedly. Giving out free records to the crowd and taking the p*ss out of MC’s who rap about girls “when technically they’re women,” he’s funny and endearing. His rhymes about teenage snogging in the park perfectly capture the excitement and confusion of a first kiss, his words strangely romantic and evocative.
There’s a gaggle of girls at the front for Swiss Lips (yes, it’s slang for vagina) whose short, sweet , synthy set shows a band with much promise - file under ones to watch. The band might be from Manchester but their sound doesn’t take any reference from their home cities past. Instead there are hints of Fenech Soler, The Killers, MGMT, The Bravery and Passion Pit in their catchy sound. “We’ve never seen so much movement in a London crowd,” they announce. They’re lucky to get that, some people here can hardly stand up let alone move.
Willy Moon finishes us off for the evening and the hope is he’ll answer some of the questions we’ve been asking about him, namely is he a one-trick pony? Is it all clever studio trickery? Is he actually some sort of record industry in joke?
With his sharp white suit and slicked back hair, Moon and his band look like they’ve stepped straight out of a magazine photo shoot. His guitarist is a seductively vampiric looking lady and behind them is a legs-apart-hit-‘em-hard drummer in space age bra-top and black and white striped trousers. Hidden away in the corner is a DJ who seems to have forgotten to dress for the occasion and maybe as punishment his sounds seem somewhat turned down in the mix. Moon’s studio releases to date have found a niche that mixes 50’s rock-n-roll with daft hip hop beats. Live his set is rawer, rougher and leaves us as perplexed as we were at the beginning of his set. My Girl sounds like a potential hit in the making whilst Yeah Yeah predictably gets the biggest audience response. He walks into the crowd, does some of THAT crazy dancing. It’s momentarily ridiculous and brilliant and by the end we’re still none the wiser if his blend of retro-modern cartoon pop is genius or rubbish. It’s probably a bit of both.
Listen to some of the bands mentioned in this review below.
This is our third preview post on Brighton’s Great Escape 2012 which takes place between 10th-12th May. Today we turn our attention towards Saturday’s activities and three further recommendations for bands to see. With the likes of We Are Scientists, Africa Express Sound System and Madeon occupying some of the bigger venues, there’s also plenty of interest at the smaller shows, particularly during the day.
Of particular note is the recent addition of ex X-Factor star Aiden Grimshaw on Saturday. It will be interesting to see what the turnout for this gig is, with day tickets for Saturday having already sold out and the Great Escape not particularly being an event that people who stay in on Saturday night and watch X-Factor are likely to attend. However there’s a possibility that there may be a sizeable crowd of curious types, given his recent positioning in fairly hip magazines, hype machine chart placing and the fact that he never really fitted in as a typical X-Factor star anyway. If you’re going to his show please let us know on twitter what you thought afterwards.
So here are three acts that are highlighted on the Breaking More Waves schedule. Our previous two posts have presented the artists music via Soundcloud streams. Today we're going visual and doing it via You Tube.
The Hydrant may be geographically somewhat out of town compared with other venues at the Great Escape but there’s a fantastic afternoon of music promised for those enjoy sounds of a more acoustic bent and make the trip to this Alt. Escape show. In fact it’s worth taking residency all afternoon to catch the likes of Karima Francis, Stealing Sheep, Like Spinning and an artist that Breaking More Waves adores – Emily and The Woods. Emily’s acoustic songs have a calmness and inner beauty to them which if you’re feeling a bit battered after your first two days could offer a gentle oasis for you to shelter in. Lovely stuff.
Sticky Mikes Frog Bar may not be the best of venues with its low ceiling and stage making viewing for pretty much anyone but the first few rows difficult, but it may be worth the effort for Newcastle’s Shields. Indie tunes that canter along with riffs designed to dance to will be the order of the day here. When we first posted their single All I Know in March the track zipped into the Hype Machine charts quite simply because it was a catchy song that buzzed for all the right reasons. A band with promise.
There’s plenty of late night shows at Great Escape but this one has to be our choice. Quite simply The Milk are one of the best new bands we’ve seen play live in some time. Euphoric tunes, arse tightening vocals, grooves, old school r ‘n’ b and northern soul flavours all mixed into one continuous no-gaps-for-applause stream The Milk will leave you feeling breathless, happy and utterly in love with music. With Jinja Safari and Slow Club on the bill as well it promises to be fine way to finish off Great Escape. See you there?
Trust us there really is more to Essex that TOWIE. For a start there’s The Milk.
Employing a heavy stab of 60’s r ‘n’ b and soul influence that the group are known for and taking a dash of their fearsome live sound to the studio, the band return with a new single Broke Up The Family, released on April 2. If the song title seems familiar it’s because we featured the video in December, although at the time we didn’t realise it was going to be a future single. We’ve included it again on this post so you can get a full feel for it.
The Milk have become Breaking More Waves blog regulars from back in 2010 when we first featured them as a new wave and then named them as ones to watch in 2011 (a little early in hindsight). Now we’re pleased to announce that the four piece have been recording and mixing their debut album with DJ and remixer Brad Baloo (The Nextmen). The as yet untitled body of work will see a release later this year.
In the meantime here’s one of two remixes that are floating round the internet at the moment. The Hostage vs Rack N Ruin version you can hear here, but we’re streaming the Kenny Ken’s version which manages to combine a reggae groove, jungle beats, rave airhorns and piano swipes. That's pretty mental.
The Milk are without doubt one of the best new live bands we’ve seen out on the road in the last couple of years and if you’re in the UK, you should be able to check them out in a venue near you as they set off on a huge tour through March and April (dates are here). We will be and consider it a crime for you not to. Beg, borrow or sell your boyfriend / girlfriend to see this band. It's a necessity.
The Milk - Broke Up The Family (Kenny Ken's #junglememories Remix)
This is the final post on Breaking More Waves for 2011. It’s time to close down, get the mulled wine hot and wafting vapour through the house, put Phil Spector’s cracking A Christmas Gift for You on and forget about the world of new music for a while.
Thank you very much if you’ve visited, read what we’ve written and listened to the music that has been featured on the blog in 2011. We’ve had a great time curating and creating it. Just the other day someone said to us that “Breaking More Waves is like going down the pub for a chat and a laugh with your best music-obsessed friend,” and for us that is the biggest compliment. This blog may not be the biggest, the coolest, the classiest or even have the best ‘taste’ ( the worlds sneering self-appointed realmusic (yes it's one word now) fans must have the best taste, because according to their book My Taste Is Better Than Your Taste Because I Said So, they said so and therefore must be right). But we’re proud of what we’ve created. Our success is just finding time to post 435 times this year (that’s the equivalent of a medium sized 400 page novel) against a background of a life that primarily revolves around family, children, full time employment many miles away from music or writing and a busy and active social life.
Our next post will be on 1st January 2012 and then on the 2ndwe’ll be revealing the Top 5 artists in the Blog Sound of 2012 poll. Then for the next few days after that we’ll be introducing you to a whole bunch of new bands and artists in our New Waves feature, a number of which have had little or any UK based blog coverage. As January rolls on we’ll also be getting argumentative in a new feature, one that we’ve already sneakily started (here) called In Defence Of. It will be our regular ‘down the pub having a good old debate with friends about a musical issue’ post. We might even try and defend some pretty non-defendable subjects, like why Matt Cardle deserved to win the Guardian Readers album of the year poll. (Basically in summary, he deserved to because most people voted for him and that is what a poll is about. It doesn't mean it's 'the best' album, just that more people voted. That's democracy dear Guardian, so don't get all snobbish and claim as you have that PJ Harvey was 'the moral victor' because you invented the rules for the poll and a bunch of people felt passionate enough about Cardle (or joined in the fun for other reasons) to follow those rules and make him win. There was nothing immoral about that. Incidentally, the Breaking More Waves album of 2011 was Last by The Unthanks but no one else seems to think so according to the polls - but it's still 'the best' to us. That's taste for you Guardian, we're all different, there's no right or wrong and those who are congratulated for having excellent taste are normally only congratulated by those with similar tastes.
More of that in 2012, but for now it’s time to press pause. Have a really happy Christmas and a brilliant New Year. We’ll be back on Jan 1st, but if you really can’t wait till then why not follow us on Twitter, right here or see what we're listening to on Last Fm here?
We’ll leave you with 5 songs that we’ve featured on Breaking More Waves that you could loosely term our tracks of the year. In choosing them we have made no attempt to look back at what we have featured on the blog in case we missed something, but just chosen the songs that have stayed with us all year, and that we'll remember as being very much part of our 2011. We're not saying they're the best, just the ones that made our own personal 2011 a little special.
Lana Del Rey – Video Games
It wasn’t just about hype. The hype wouldn’t have existed if the song wasn’t utterly affecting.
Holed away somewhere in Devon a virtually unknown young singer songwriter created this effortlessly sweet summery sounding pop song. It was love on first listen.
Between November 21th and December 17th Breaking More Waves has been going list-mental. Ones to Watch 2012 (15 of them in total), the Blog Sound of 2012 poll, the run down on our 10 favourite albums of the year and commentary on the BBC Sound of 2012 list, it feels like we’ve exhausted our ability to compile and order music to make some sort of sense of the world.
So now, up until Christmas, when a short break is in order, we get back to doing what we do. That is featuring our favourite new tunes together with the occasional debate and discursive piece on issues that surround our passion.
So following our Ones to Watch 2012 it’s probably worth reminding you of one of our Ones to Watch for 2011 and this lot. Chelmsford white-soul boys The Milk probably didn’t put out quite the volume of material we were hoping for last year although their one single (All I Wanted Was) Danger would have been in our top 10 tracks list, but we're fat and bloated with lists and can't take any more.
However 2012 looks mighty promising with the band having now put the ink on the line with a new imprint called Sign Of The Times, an alliance between Sony Music UK and Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment. Now the band have the backing to do what we’ve always wanted them to do and to get out of London (where they’ve been packing out sweating venues includingHoxton Bar & Kitchen, Jazz Cafe, XOYO and Barfly ) to show people what they’re made of. With a 28 date UK tour of all of the best and worst of toilet venues, there’s no excuse if you live in England, Scotland or Wales for not going out and catching The Milk. This is a band that plays the sweetest yet grittiest of contemporary soul-jams with signature hooks and brassy grooves that absolutely delight ears. Frankly if you press play on the video for Broke Up The Family below (an acoustic version of which will feature on the download version of the single) and don’t feel it, there’s something wrong with you.
The new single from The Milk is B Roads and is available on iTunes and 7” vinyl from today. Vintage crackles and police sirens sidle into a hipshaking retro-party groove complete with street-corner harmonies and funkaholic retro-riffs. Great stuff. Why not give yourself an early Christmas present and buy it now.
A list of our top 5 tracks of the first quarter of 2011 would undoubtedly include (All I Wanted Was) Danger by The Milk. Quite simply it’s a piece of brassy hip swinging soulful brilliance. Can a song become a classic when it’s not even been released yet? Answer = Yes, quite possibly in our world. Thankfully that date is not far away now for March 28 sees Britain’s musical answer to Cee Lo Green come storming out of the traps packed full of musical charisma, forcing smiles wherever they go. We’ve yet to see the band live (although will be doing so very soon) but from what we’ve been hearing they absolutely storm it wherever they play and sold out shows are already occurring.
Since we first wrote about the band back in September 2010 The Milk has slowly been building up a weight of praise including positive comments from the likes of The News Of The World, The Guardian, Neon Gold and of course The Fun Lovin’ Criminal himself - Huey from BBC 6 Music who like ourselves has been a massive supporter of the band.
To celebrate and remind you of the tracks release – The Milk’s debut - you’ll find the new video for the song below which is a simple performance piece in a pub, complete with pints and shots - as well as two remixes. The Nextmen and Random Impulse strip away the Staxx flavours and add hip hop beats and a new rap, whilst Greenmoney brings tropical -rhythmic house flavours and some heavy carnival bass. The Greenmoney remix is available for free download, so grab it and groove. The god father of soul may have passed away, but The Milk are his grandchildren. Believe it. Top notch stuff.
“The band of 2011 mark my words,” Huey Morgan on BBC 6 Music announced the other day, and we hope he’s right, for The Milk are a band that have been filling our life with joy for the last few months. Having named the Essex four-piece in our annual Ones To Watch list last December, the band are limbering up for their first release, the Motown and Stax influenced stomper (All I Wanted Was) Danger – a song that makes the best use of brackets we’ve seen since Meatloaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).
With their emotional melodies, hooky instrumentation and infused with a multitude of references such as Sam Cooke, The Style Council, The Ronettes, Cee Lo Green and Fine Young Cannibals, The Milk are punching white-soul back into the ring with some style. Believe us, The Milk make stir-crazy grooves designed to get even your granny whirling on the dance floor.
The band are from just outside Chelmsford, Essex – Wickford to be exact - birthplace of Alvin Stardust and Chantelle Houghton of ‘Big Brother’ fame, although we suggest they keep quiet about that one. They spent their wasted youth as a punk band before deciding on re-invention, which led to them almost naming themselves Nigel Winterbottom and the Flat Back Four, until they finally settled with the name of The Milk and this classic sound.
This is just the start. Are you up for them? We’re with Huey. (All I Wanted Was) Danger drops on March 28. It streams below together with the B-Side Dynamite and their cover of 54-46 Was My Number which you can download for free.
Get ready. Press play. Get your dancing shoes on. Brilliant.
Chelmsford may not have a particularly rich musical heritage, its biggest claim is hosting the overtly corporate festival monster that is V Festival, but residents The Milk are a band who put a bit of swagger into its heart.
The Milk do a superb take of 60s r'n'b and soul, a sound that refuses to go away and still proves incredibly commercial – with everyone from Plan B to Cee Lo Green taking reference points and delivering sales with it.
The band consist of Ricky Nunn (guitar, lead vocals), Mitch Ayling (drums, backing vocals), Luke Ayling (bass), Dan Le Gresley (guitar, vocals) and whilst it would be easy to accuse them of being simply northern soul revivalists, The Milk are very much of the here and now. They’ve been working with hip-hop/electronic DJ-remixer Brad Baloo from the Nextmen to give them a contemporary edge and from what we’ve heard their live gigs feature snatches of hip-hop breaks in between the songs to make the whole show flow in a constant.
As we identified back in September, our favourite song so far is Chip the Kids a brisk disco influenced groove that bounds with brassy gusto and tantalising secular rhythms. It’s impossible not to dance to and has the most authentic young soul rebel sound we’ve heard since Dexy’s Midnight Runners – and that’s quite a compliment. We understand that the band are currently beavering away to produce an album which should drop in 2011 and have dates lined up at South by South West in Texas as well as the Snowbombing Festival in Austria.
Bringing modern soul to the UK, The Milk could be the cats that get the cream. Their licks are full of goodness.
A few days ago we posted our preview of Southsea Fest and recommended five groups for the viewing and listening pleasure of those going (here). However there was one more band that we wanted to add to the list of recommendations (well, OK there's probably another 15 but time and space do not permit) that are so pleasing, so god-damn marvellous that we decided that they deserved a post all of their own.
It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a white soul and funk revival. Not since Paul Weller and Mick Talbot formed the Style Council and The Fine Young Cannibals took the slinky R&B riff of Good Thing to the top has the sound of Motown, Stax and Ska had a significant impact on the charts in its purest form. The Dexy-esque brass sound of The Rumblestrips was great but wasn't a hit with the masses and the less said about the Ordinary Boys take on the mod / ska scene the better. Of course many acts from Take That to Glasvegas have taken influence from classic Motown but not many have embraced the authenticity of that golden age wholeheartedly. Recently however Plan B has opened the possibilities again with the radio friendly She Said and his surprisingly good album The Defamation of Strickland Banks, and now here’s a bunch that quite easily follow in his footsteps.
The band have already supported DJ Yoda, Chase and Status and this weekend played the Brownstock Festival. Next up, as previously mentioned, you can catch them in Breaking More Waves home town of Portsmouth at Southsea Fest. Stream The Milk below.
