{"id":2256,"date":"2015-06-05T18:59:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T17:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=2256"},"modified":"2011-06-22T08:53:15","modified_gmt":"2011-06-22T08:53:15","slug":"milk-maid-%e2%80%93-%e2%80%98yucca%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/milk-maid-%e2%80%93-%e2%80%98yucca%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"Milk Maid \u2013 \u2018Yucca\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

(album, Suffering Jukebox\/FatCat)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This debut set from a quartet fronted by Nine Black Alps bassist Martin Cohen is an exercise in deliberately defenestrated melody, recorded in glorious lo-fi at his Manchester flat. The deliberately basic production serves to imbue his often head-swimmingly sweet songs with pleasantly jagged edges, resulting in an engaging, largely bittersweet corpus of songs.<\/p>\n

The lo-fi production also enables a sense of Ramonic minimalism, as in opener \u2018Such Fun\u2019, a track which establishes the template of matching simple yet intelligent lyrics against rough-hewn melody, and in this instance, tops the confection off with some effective two-note soloing. \u2018Can\u2019t You See\u2019 extends the motif of serrated pop to emerge sounding like So Alone <\/em>era Johnny Thunders on a particularly lucid day.<\/p>\n

The bedroom knob-twiddling is particularly evident at the opening of \u2018Oh!\u2019 as the recording level is turned up to amplify a track that occupies a kind of Barrettesque whimsical dreamland, but here is planted \u2013 in part \u2013 in grim reality by lyrics that recall the emotive power of Dan Treacy. \u2018Dead Wrong\u2019 sees Yucca <\/em>blossom into a twisted-yet-addictive bloom comprised of sumptuous defenestrated melodies. This, along with the vandalised powerpop of recent single \u2018Not Me\u2019 are the album\u2019s standout tracks \u2013 both bearing some relation to the kind of tortured beauty that became synonymous with the Jesus and Mary Chain.<\/p>\n

Along with the subsequent \u2018Same As What\u2019, \u2018Girl\u2019 marks one of two points at which the album gets a little folky, it being a love song reminiscent of REM at their least unbearable that also taps into some Byrds influences. By way of contrast, the brief \u2018Kill Me Again\u2019 sounds for all the world like Freddie and The Dreamers have been mixing goof balls with horse tranquilisers.<\/p>\n

\u2018Back of Your Knees\u2019 is Yucca<\/em>\u2019s most expansive track \u2013 providing a stratospheric sense of being buffeted by successive waves of distorted guitar and harmonic vocals that are both evocative and affecting. The number is also embellished by a truly nasty sounding low-end bridge section. Equally vibrant is \u2018Sad Song\u2019, an exercise in battered bubblegum bedroom glam economy that\u2019s more \u2018bang a friend\u2019 than \u2018bang a gong\u2019.<\/p>\n

Milk Maid sign off with \u2018Someone You Thought You\u2019d Forgot\u2019 \u2013 a mournful and haunting lullaby from bedsit land that brings this engaging album to a logical conclusion.<\/p>\n

MILK MAID on MySpace<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

To order Yucca <\/em>direct, click HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(album, Suffering Jukebox\/FatCat) This debut set from a quartet fronted by Nine Black Alps bassist Martin Cohen is an exercise in deliberately defenestrated melody, recorded in glorious lo-fi at his Manchester flat. The deliberately basic production serves to imbue his often head-swimmingly sweet songs with pleasantly jagged edges, resulting in an engaging, largely bittersweet corpus …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,88,71,92],"tags":[121,371,369,370],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-garage","category-indie","category-music","category-post-punk","tag-eyeplug","tag-martin-cohen","tag-milk-maid","tag-yucca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2256"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=2256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}