Description

Nearly 20 years since releasing their first cassette album, Milky Wimpshake unveil their fifth proper album Heart And Soul In The Milky Way, due out on Fortuna POP! in February 2013. Recorded in a single day, it consists of 15 more songs from the pop/punk chocolate assortment box which the band have raided for so many years: love songs, silly songs, songs about obsolete items of stationary and such like, all set to a basic guitar buzz and kick drum combo.

The album bristles with spontaneous excitement due to the success of the live recording with no overdubs, giving Heart And Soul In The Milky Way a much rawer, yet fresher feel than their previous albums, with the likes of Worthless Person veering towards Billy Childish garage rock territory. Milky Wimpshake have produced the strongest set of songs of their career from the subterranean homesick opener Chemical Spray, with its arbitrary rhymes and taking-the-piss guitar break, the innuendo-laden On Top, full of maudlin indie-pop melodicism and the closing duet Without You which covers the same theme as six million other songs and yet still manages to raise a smile.

While the majority of the album features compositions by frontman Pete Dale (also head of the legendary indie label Slampt), there are two covers, including a punked-up version of Lah-Di-Dah, a song by Jake Thackray, a singer-songwriter who had some success in the 1960s and 70s with often-lewd lyrics which he used to croon with wonderfully tired eyes. There is also a version of Omnia Mea Mecum Porto by North East underground group Les Cox (Sportifs). The songs title means everything I own goes where I go and contains hilarious lyrics about the anxiety of an impending days work.

Milky Wimpshake isnt the kind of band which expects to sell out big venues, top the charts or get chased by screaming fans: its simple music, with simple sentiments for folk smart enough to see that sometimes simplicity works like a charm.