Harvey Milk – Life…The Best Game In Town

I dunno what your take on this is, but it always seems a bit odd to me how old all these noise-rock types are. Harvey Milk, Oxbow, Boredoms, Melvins, Earth, Boris”¦ they’ve been going for fucking years, in many cases longer than I’ve even been alive. No wonder their ideas frequently seem so tired and rubbish. They’ve essentially managed to make a lifespan-dominating career out of just dicking about with guitars (not that I’m applying this statement in any way to Boredoms, who I love intensely”¦ well maybe early Boredoms *were* just dicking about, but look where it led to eventually). Harvey Milk themselves have been around, give or take a big hiatus somewhere in the middle, since 1994. Only now have they started to get what seems to be a significant amount of attention (well, I’d heard the name before, but only really in passing”¦), by crafting this: Life”¦ the Best Game In Town, which seems to be something of a crossover record, appealing in equal measure to noise-rock bores, and people who like songs as well as just interesting sounds.Harvey Milk are droney, violent, and ‘unpredictable’ in only the way the noisiest of bands can be, ie: actually quite predictable- I mean, I might not know where the next sudden tempo change is coming, but I know its going to be a tempo change, and its going to be sudden. To be honest I’m probably not the right person to review this, because this sort of music has long ceased to fascinate me in any real way, but then again, I do *quite* like it. This record I mean. It’s a pretty good record. I mean, I’m pretty turned off on noise right now. This years Nightmare Before Christmas line-up so far is a big kingdom of fail for me (give me Release The Bats over it any time), minus Dalek and to a lesser extent Fantomas of course, and I’m pretty sick of being surrounded, it seems, by people who found that big repetitive noise part of the MBV gig “beautiful” (as opposed to just a bit funny because of how long it lasted and the look on everyone’s faces), and find Ex-Models in any way interesting (as opposed to like when you’re on a bus and you’re tired and the rocking movement ends up lulling you to sleep). But THIS ISN’T ABOUT THAT, TOM, its about Harvey Milk, and this is a pretty alright record.Opener ‘Death Goes To The Winner’ is close to 8 minutes of basically Flipper cranked up to the absolute max. “Life if the best game in town and death goes to the winner,”- aw yeah. Factor in some lulling chanting reminiscent of that flop Greogrian-prog record The Electric Prunes did at the start and you’re on to an absolute, er, ‘winner’ (see what I did there?). Of course its probably the strongest thing here but the rest is a good, consistent, and consistently extreme and ‘unpredictable’ (lulz) hardcore record that, you know, I like. Oh and actually in terms of stuff on it that’s ACTUALLY unpredictable- the awkward, churning near-pub hard rock of ‘Motown’ midway through the album does come as SOMETHING of a surprise. So yeah. Well done. Maybe all this noise thing isn’t quite so boring after all. Now all I need is someone to give me a good reason to get turned on to folk. 77%Links Harvey Milk [myspace]