If you were unfortunate enough, ever, to find yourself in an O’Neill’s on a weekday evening or, worse still, a Saturday night, you’d be likely to find a band exactly as good, no better or worse, and exactly the same, essentially note for note, as Essex’s absolutely disgraceful answer to a question no-one ever asked (‘What would the Style Council sound like if they were all unemployed McDonald’s workers?” is that question), The fucking Milk.
They are the pub-rock Maroon 5. They are the absolute worst we have to offer.
One of the most offensive aspects of The Milk’s rancid spew is their desperate desire to affiliate themselves with wonderful musicians, sounds and labels. ‘Stax, Chess and Motown’ cries their press release. The Milk bear as much relation to these rightfully celebrated imprints as a used condom overflowing with blood and cigarette ends being forced into your throat by an escaped murderer relates to a perfect coastal sunset experienced alongside everyone you’ve ever truly loved.
They compare their rhythm section to that of The Roots. They describe their ‘flow’ as being akin to that of The Beastie Boys’ seminal ‘Paul’s Boutique’. They are absolutely, defiantly, dangerously deluded hollow shells of men reflecting a shadow of wanton nothing across a nation that (perhaps)deserves better.
‘Vandellas-meets-Springsteen’ it says here. Jesus fucking cunting Christ. Are you kidding me? If the Vandellas did indeed ‘meet’ Springsteen they would undoubtedly enact an entirely justified ritual murder/suicide in order to prevent the even vague possibility of music like this being created in their name. Like the skinheads that subverted punk for all the wrong reasons, The Milk are attempting to fuck the corpse of soul and rock n’ roll in the hope that it’ll somehow come back to life and embrace them with open arms before making them billionaires. They twist the corpse into various dreadful shapes (this is their music you see) and hope you’ll be distracted by it’s rictus grin long enough to get away with it.
‘We really had to go for it…Fuck work, fuck everything else’ self-righteously spits singer Rick. They shouldn’t have done that. They all should have stayed in whatever gainful employment they could get and spared us of this middling, sensible, faux-wild, fake-passionate absolute hollow void of an abyss of musical nothing.
The track that drew A&R scum to them like so many coke-hungry whores is ‘(All I Wanted Was) Danger’. It’s not the worst song on this ‘album’, though believe you me it IS one of the worst songs ever written. Imagine hearing Dexy’s Midnight Runners if they had literally NO soul, NO commitment to their art, ABSOLUTE ZERO passion and heart. Imagine, then, if they were The Stereophonics. That’s who The Milk are – The Stereophonics of fake soul.
They have a song called ‘Mr Motivator’ that you will be unable to believe exists. A song so offensive as it blindly stamps on the history of reggae, the reputation of soul, the whole of music as a cultural experience that you can only pray it will be buried under a thousand mile high pile of bricks, the planet abandoned and humanity re-homed in an alternate universe simply to avoid its’ hateful, sickening money-grabbing, fake working class awfulness.
A band of the people they’d like you to think judging by the awful honking about things his ‘momma told’ him on ‘B-Roads’ a tale of being persecuted by a biker gang. Yes. You heard. These people are frighteningly mentally unwell. They reduce the currency of music by and of the people to such a degree that they actually denigrate society itself. Civilisation is next to worthless, surely, if this horror can be allowed to flourish.
Did you know that this is the band that ruined the reputation of the mighty Idris Elba by having him guest on one of their dirty little dirges? That’s the kind of evil power they have – they can make The Wire shit. You MUST turn your back and chant ‘I Don’t believe in you’, you must.
The Milk are The Sun’s favourite band. Much as I’m sure The Sun is The Milk’s favourite newspaper. This is not an obstacle we can overlook or ever overcome. There are worse things than being sell outs, worse things than being absolutely synthetic – The Milk are all of those things and have so many more of the unspeakable traits we’ve not even invented terms for yet.
If you buy this record you despise music, music despises you and society will fall. At least that shitty dadrock band in O’Neill’s are doing it for less nefarious reasons than these worthless charlatans.
[Rating:1]