by Dan Goldin (@paintingwithdan)
Over the past ten years Milked has become the artistic catch-all for Kelly Johnson’s (Geronimo!, Big Big Bison) music, a source of creative freedom. Over the course of three albums and the project’s debut EP, the band have explored surging power-pop, fuzzy punk, lo-fi bedroom pop, radiant post-punk, and even a touch of hardcore with spectacular results. Johnson’s songwriting is the glue holding it all together, built on muscular hooks, punchy melodies, and towering guitar leads with production that’s both crystal clear but never over-polished. It’s been seven long years since Milked released their last album, the highly underrated Crawling Passed (seriously, go give it a listen), but Johnson and his frequent collaborators are back with a new album, Forgotten Pleasures. Due out August 29th via the newly formed Radish Head Records, the album is a welcome resurgence, a big blistering record of FM gold alternative rock that’s more than happy to wander down rabbit holes with warped vision and kaleidoscopic dexterity. Forgotten Pleasures keeps you guessing from song to song, presenting a dynamic record that compliments the whole, a smattering of ideas that pours from a singular source.
With its wide scope, Forgotten Pleasures demands to be heard in full, and while little can prepare you for certain tracks, Milked are sharing the record’s first single, “Slow Pyre,” one of the album’s sonically unique moments. Joined by Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz, Sad13) on backing vocals and Kara Eubanks (Troubled Hubble, The Heligoats) on violin, the song comes unglued from the start, an art pop odyssey with shack shaking programmed beats, plucked strings, warm guitars, flickering samples, and a melodic refrain that seems to pay tribute to The Vaselines. There’s a warped dance groove that underlines the structure, a cosmic aerobic workout, and yet Johnson and company’s surrealist vision is still very much “modern” rock, a borderless (if not entirely indicative) peak into the wide world of Forgotten Pleasures.