By sheer coincidence, in the week which saw us playing Great Records From The 90s You Never Hear On The Radio Anymore, my first gig of 2018 turns out to include a band who sound like they’ve walked straight through a door from 1995. This wasn’t what I was fully expecting.
I’m not sure how I got this wrong either, but as they helter skelter into their second song, I’m already rueing the misinformation I’ve been giving out to people earlier.
(ASIDE: I arrive at the Victoria, order a drink, set off to the Gents and a hand emerges from the dim organgey light to tap me on the shoulder. Said arm, it turns out, belongs to the lovely Jamie T, who’s sat on a bar stool next to Miles Kane (the two of them have spent the day in the studio together) blissfully unaware of how much of a fan boy I am of him. I’ve always thought JT has cut a decent path through the industry; always putting music before any idea of a career as such. I like him a lot.
Anyway, we end up in a conversation about the optimum length of time it takes to make a good album (“18 months” apparently) and then I give them a rough precis of what FIGHT MILK sound like: sensitive, GSOH, a wrap-around indie embrace….which I realise now sounds like a lonely hearts ad, but that’s probably the one bit I got vaguely right).
FIGHT MILK actually sound a bit like the pop noise Sleeper would make, if you recorded them zorbing down a hill.
They are more pointedly funny, in a self-effacing way, but have some eager, unafraid-to-blush tunes, which are similar in punchy construction to Wener and co’s first album.
They are also feeling poorly: “We’re all full of cold, which is why we’re rocking so hard. Tonight you can call us The Phelgmenheads.”
It’s not all three and a half minute Britpop without a budget though. After one longer and more curious song (which may have been ‘Solving Crimes In Sweden’ if my notes are right) they reveal: “That was our Post-Rock Phase. All four minutes of it.”
Not exactly Statuesque, but they made me smile.
* FIGHT MILK’s ‘Pity Party’ EP (including the 20s crisis ‘Bank Of Mum & Dad’ and the excellent ‘NYE’) is out now on Fierce Panda