LISTEN: Milkshake – Milkshake EP II

We get a lot of band write-ins that end with many, many kind regards and other polite fluff. Among my favourite are the submissions which leave nothing but a trail of obscure hyperlink crumbs and not much else for us blog-types to deliver accurate, real-time information to the people. Milkshake got our attention late last year after sending us a funny abusive rant. An email apology a week later blaming life on drunk existentialist haiku was also noted.Fergus Miller from Bored Nothing plays guitar in Milkshake. He showed up to our last warehouse party reasonably wasted and spent most of the night scrambling hands and knees on the floor trying to locate his glasses. Fergus fangs around on guitar in here, Matt Connelly of Retro Culture makes nice noise, Geoffrey Thorsen also does the same and some other people do other things in this band which I can’t decipher beyond the flavour alias in the ‘about’ section of their Facebook page. 

To provide some visual context to Milkshake’s second EP, Milkshake II sounds like backflipping through space. Wet snow sock. Murky optimism. Midi sound crackles between dude-chants and rousing chord work make for some soothing listening. Could be the biopic soundtrack to a stoned Jonathan Boulet eating packet noodles in the dark.

The lacework drums which crawl through ‘Vacant Lot’ and ‘The Way Back Through’ are both sensual and unsettling. The percussion in particular on this EP takes me back to the quirks of Seagull’s 2010 LP Council Tree that in parts, verged on the type of curious music people awkwardly sway to at gigs.

I have little bother about this EP apart from the lo-fi sound bites. That’s kinda Fergus’ trademark thing, but if you’ve listened to anything by Retro Culture you would have thought that both could have found a meeting point. I’ve passed out on by bed with next to my macbook listening to this EP (twice this week) before finishing this post. I’m great at championing glorified background music, but I’m liking this a lot.

Milkshake EP II is available to purchase for $2 at Milkshake’s Bandcamp page.

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