Harvey Milk - Life...The Best Game in Town
Hydra Head - HYH-159 - 3 June 2008
By Paddy Walsh
Inhabiting a similar sphere as the
Melvins,
Corrosion of Conformity and others within the 'punky-Sabbath-sludge-cum-rock' genre,
Harvey Milk have returned after a lengthy hiatus to produce
Life..., a thoroughly heavy offering that's possibly their best work to date. A doom-trodden, dirge-like quality washes over many of the tracks herein - most notably in the suitably spiteful 'After All I've Done for You, This is How You Repay Me?' - but when they rock out there's a touch of the southern-fried boogie that could easily have appeared on an
Alabama Thunderpussy record. 'Barnburner' is aptly titled, for instance, blasting forth like an undesirable hoedown incited by a throng of doped-up hillbillies, and although
Harvey Milk are a fairly monstrous beast at times, there is a creeping melodicism at play throughout; hell, 'Decades' outro leads would give a Sarah Palin-esque wink to
Led Zeppelin if vocalist Creston Spiers hand't just been roaring at us like Buzz Osbourne with the flu.
At times Life... can drag a little, the band lingering on riffs that don't quite deserve it. 'Goodbye Blues' is such an example as it happily goes nowhere for 4 minutes before finally taking off in a barrage of inspired leads. Of course, it's more than likely that the band knew exactly what they were doing, since 'Goodbye Blues' winds up, literally, in the theme tune for 'Looney Tunes'. There's an amiable balance between the more off-kilter moments and the all-out rocking on this album that marks it well above its peers, and it has the grittiness that the last few
Melvins albums have perhaps lacked (not to mention their ex-4 stringer Joe preston on bass duties). And like the
Melvins,
Harvey Milk have a slacker-friendly, oddball humour to them that works well with such material.
Life... is the kind of record you'll want to put on before a night drinking crappy beer and crushing the cans off your forehead, and as such it probably has the most appropriate artwork you'll ever see. Life affirming.
Official Harvey Milk Website
Official Harvey Milk MySpace
Official Hydra Head Website
