The Milk - Thekla, Bristol - 16th November 2012 (Live Review)
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Written by Owen Sheppard
When you find an interview with an upcoming band faced with a typical question like “what kind of music are you guys influenced by?” the most common answers are usually something unknowingly disingenuous like:
“We listen to all kinds of music. I like Oasis but our drummer likes The Foo Fighters and our guitarist likes Pendulum, so a bit of everything really”.
From the moment you’ve read such a response you can bet your entire itunes library that they actually sound just like every other guitar band of the last 20 years who have failed to emerge from obscurity.
So welcome, The Milk, A Chelmsford four-piece who you can imagine would deliver a fully bull shitless answer to said question, and quickly prove it with some genuinely different, interesting music and a live show with the dynamics and excitement of a band you could actually see yourself falling head over heels for.
It’s The Milk’s biggest headline tour yet and tonight they’ve hit the iron hull of one of the UK’s most unique venues, The Thekla, and when I say unique, I mean a boat, floating on a river. Not your usual inner city dive bar ay? Well actually if you’re a Bristolian music fan, yes it is.
Just what makes The Milk worth your time is their exceptional crossover between working class indie rock and anything from the explosive but Soulful croons akin to Maverick Sabre, delivered by front man Ricky Nunn to brass splashes of 80s Ska. Keeping on the jazz/soul tip, they even open with a cheeky cover of Rudimental’s 'Feel The Love'. The Milk really capture a very modern musical aesthetic that tips its Trilby to a host of classic and 21st century influences.
Tonight, they go one further and empty their hip hop skeletons from their closets. Lead guitarist Dan Le Gresley picks away instrumentals of hits from legends like Dr Dre and Wu Tang Clan providing clever breakdowns for 'Mr Motivator' and 'Picking Up The Pieces'. Meanwhile The classic trip hop melody of Unfinished Sympathy' by Bristol’s own Massive Attack is brought to the fore, presumably as an homage for Bristolian music, that works as a wonderful intro to fan favourite 'Every Time We Fight'. Listening to The Milk’s show, you get the feeling that they could be rescuing indie using a similar tactic that Refused once used to breathe life in to the stagnating state of 90’s punk.
They look in their element on stage, something that’s come from years of touring. Nunn even audaciously asks the crowd to do that thing where everyone crouches down and hopefully jump up and go bananas as the beat kicks in. Everyone from Foals to Slipknot has tried it and it’s starting to seem like a tiresome cliché but here, The Milk pull it off and it even sparks an awkward smattering of moshing from kids who are most likely on a couple of cheap cans of cheap cider too many.
Later on this tour The Milk are set to play Shepherd’s Bush Empire, which Nunn tells us “will be the biggest show of our career”. But you get a feeling that The Milk will be repeating these words sooner than later once their work starts to pay off, he modestly left a “so far” off the end of that statement.
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“We listen to all kinds of music. I like Oasis but our drummer likes The Foo Fighters and our guitarist likes Pendulum, so a bit of everything really”.
