As the old saying goes, a band can take a lifetime to record their debut album. Along the way, though, the process can shape and alter you, pushing in directions that may not be quite as favourable as you anticipate.
The Milk certainly found this. The band’s debut album – a heady brew of hip-hop beats, pop melodies and a gruff, soulful feel – was packed with promise, but to those around the group it didn’t quite match who they were as musicians. “It was a bit of a divergence, to be honest with you,” explains guitarist Dan Legresley. “The songs are great, man, and there's loads to be happy with about that album, but it didn't quite reach the intensity that we felt we maybe had.”
Taking some down time after the release of their debut, the band pondered where they could go next. “You meet your idols and your dreams come true,” he explains. “So I think we came out of that period a bit, like, what are we doing next? Are we going to carry on? Do we still want it as much?”
“It's a difficult business, the music industry,” he continues. “You've got to make a living and pay the bills and all that as well. You've got people around you going: maybe you should be normal like everybody else, and go and get a day job! So I think from that, that fear, that transition, getting older and those sort of things, those strains, I think they often spawn good bits of creativity when you're under duress.”
Plunging themselves into studio sessions with The Bees’ Paul Butler, The Milk poured their pent up energy into songwriting. “The thing is, we're fortunate in this band in that everyone writes. It's that alchemy of everyone coming in (to the studio) and it can be written in a thousand different ways. So if you've got four people all writing a lot, that's a lot of output, so it could be a little idea here and there, it could be a whole song, it could be a lyrical idea, it may be that someone has written most of it sitting on their own, it could be that we get together and jam something out. There's a million different ways to do it, really, with this record. The strange thing is that half of it came from the last two or three weeks. It's amazing what a bit of pressure does.”
Now signed to London independent Wah Wah 45s, the band found that creative matched to limited budgets created a unique kind of provocation. “It was all done live. We set that out. That was our stall from day one. Maybe it was a by-product of not doing it so much on the first record but we're players, we appreciate bands that play together. I suppose that’s what it is about those great records from the 60s and 70s, y'know, it’s about players, playing together and finding the pocket. So that was our mantra: everything is played live, the four of us. There are some overdubs in some of the horns, but what you're hearing as a rhythm section is the four of us live.”
Influenced by deep soul greats such as Bill Withers, The Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye and the Stax output, the resulting album is an emotive yet rough-hewn listen. ‘Favourite Worry’ may have a sense of introversion, of darkness, but it also transgresses this via some resurgent, propulsive, horn-laden melodies.
“It was feeling, man,” the guitarist insists. “When you're in the room together there's a certain kind of chemistry that happens, when you're watching each other and you can play in the pocket. You can play at the back of the beat of the drummer and you're watching what the bass player is doing, and making sure that what you're doing sits in there nicely. Playing live, there's a pressure about the take, because you can't keep playing all night. At some point you find the moment and you record a moment in time, and there's something romantic about that, y'know?”
Out on October 16th, ‘Favourite Worry’ is a raw return from a band both propelled and burned by the music industry. It’s a document that remains true to the original intentions of The Milk, an unprocessed and realistic depiction of four songwriters fuelled by some of the greatest music of all time. “We've all got a deeply held love of playing music and we hopefully do it with integrity and honesty,” Dan says at one point. “And being a proper fucking band, y'know – a player's band.”
Clash is able to stream ‘Favourite Worry’ before anyone else – check it out below.
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'Favourite Worry' will be released on October 16th.
Catch The Milk at the following shows:
October
24 Leicester The Cookie Jar
25 Liverpool Liverpool Arts Club
27 Sheffield The Leadmill (Steel Stage)
28 Manchester Band on the Wall
29 Bristol Thekla
30 Brighton Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar
31 Guildford The Boileroom
November
1 Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
10 London Scala
12 Nottingham Bodega Social Club
13 Glasgow King Tuts Wah Wah Hut
14 Dundee Reading Rooms
15 Sunderland Independent
