Milky Wimpshake – My Funny Social Crime

I’m listening to a copy of Milky Wimpshake’s latest album on a broken CD player that produces a strangely alluring whir underneath anything you try and play. You can’t help but think that chief Wimp Pete Dale would approve of this; mostly known for heading up the uber-DIY Slampt Records, the Sunderland label which discovered (and was subsequently disowned in song by) Kenickie, his own erstwhile lo-fi combo has been quietly churning out fizzy indiepoppunk nuggets for about fifteen years now. Much like his beloved Ramones, the songs tend to remain the same – three chord wonders, the lot – but Dale’s lyrical charm is undeniable; be it rhapsodising on a true near-death motorway experience on ‘Blow Out at 80 MPH’ or beating himself up about being some girl’s less-important “Other Man” on the classic ‘Dialing Tone’, his slant on life and love is unique.

Coming just under a decade after their last album proper, My Funny Social Crime comes as something of a disappointment; if you’re familiar with the band’s work, you’ll know not to expect any kind of progress – no bad thing – and Dale’s warm humour still abounds. Opener ‘Alice Nebulae’ is a cute billet-doux for a beloved hippy chick (“I love the dirt between her toes”), while on ‘Broken Again’, Dale seems to channel (of all people) Syd Barrett, charmingly rhyming a line about “people crossing the street to avoid me” with a fear that he’s “beginning to think paranoidly.” Meanwhile, ‘Patchwork’ stands alone in the band’s catalogue – a heartfelt, string-laden ballad in which Dale resigns himself to an argumentative life with the woman of his dreams – and may be the most mature thing he’s yet written.

Sadly, there’s a great deal here that’s downright awful, or worse – average. The overlong metacommentary of ‘Itchy Feet on a Saturday Night’ certainly falls into the former category – the dullest, most cliche-ridden thing the band have yet concocted, as if Raditude-era Rivers Cuomo was trying to rewrite Let’s Wrestle’s listless anthem ‘My Schedule’. ‘Thursday’ fares a little better, possibly being the only song in history to reference both And The Mysterons and The Wonder Stuff, but suffers from a particularly disaffected vocal from Dale, while the hypnotic acoustics of ‘Murder in London’ are gorgeous, but its Jean Charles de Menezes-referencing lyrics just make its agit-prop message ridiculously dated – as any protest song would when you write about a subject from five years’ remove.

To be fair, the frequent missteps taken on My Funny Social Crime aren’t going to matter to the band’s ardent fanbase, and Milky Wimpshake’s all-too-rare live shows will remain glorious occasions. Hopefully, though, this record won’t make up too much of the setlist – it’s hardly criminal, but it’s not all that funny either. What a Milky Wimpshame.