the second half is less bleak. i forget the names right now, but tracks 5 and 7 are probably my favorites. but it's a pretty great record all around.

This whole album plays like a murder ballad. The lyrics are devastating.

Absolutely perfect music. This band makes every single other band seem like fucking amateurs.

^

This record's a monster. Awesome.

This just made my week.

There's nothing like Harvey Milk.

Does anyone else have problems with that NPR media player? I get maybe 2/3 into a song and it just freezes up and I have to close it and start over. This always seems to happen with these NPR streams. Fuck it, I'll be buying this next week anyway.

I listened to the stream three times. No problems.

I should probably just buy this Tuesday, as well. Or is the vinyl gonna be delayed or something.

it's hydra head so the vinyl will come out in 2012

limited, obvs., and $60/per on six single sided lps

I listened to the first thirty seconds of the stream and decided to just buy it when it comes out and listen then.

Next week, you say?

The first listen will most likely be driving my car around the Evanston - Skokie -Lincolnwood tri-city area, btw.

Nice, bro.

Probably a decent soundtrack for driving past abandoned strip malls.

np again. This album is the best. Love that it's 37.5 minutes.

These are guys I'd like to hang out with.

Tepidly positive p4k review and still no mp3 leak. Makes me feel like I do after listening to a Harvey Milk album.

Spoiler/NSFW: click to show/hide

This is a better review, obviously:

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/5716

And I saw the tracks on Big Dogg's Last.fm a few days ago. Or maybe I just dreamt it. Been enjoying wearing the fuck out of this "NPR stream," though.

"As I sat, I looked.
There was something everywhere."

That pretty much says it all.

love the end of that dusted review: The Blues is definitely at the heart of what Harvey Milk does. Melvins/Lynyrd/Skip James.

There are mp3s on the internet for this now, btw

really hoping to see these dudes this year.

i can only find shitty 30 meg d/l's

Thanks for the background info.

I didn't know they covered a Leonard Cohen tune.

I'm going to plug something regarding the real Harvey Milk:

The Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University in Chicago is featuring a photography exhibit: "San Francisco in the 1970s" with work by Jerry Pritikin documenting the story of Harvey Milk and other influential gay men during that time and place. It opens on June 3 with a reception featuring the photographer from 5 to 8 p.m. and closes on August 13.

I wish I could say that the band will be playing at the opening, which I think is a greater appeal to Sombies, but in case anyone's interested, it looks like an interesting exhibit.

More info is available at: www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery

Two. In addition to "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong," Creston does a mean "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy."

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nkxzk9

thanks Ted.

I'm going to listen to this music.

oh nice

FLAC anyone? (not my link)

http://lix.in/-807675

holy shit this band is amazing. i wanna see them now.

I've been to two of their shows in less than a year and all I can think of is how much I want them to tour again.

Watching their live DVD for four hours straight last weekend almost made up for it but not quite.

Been listening to HM more than usual this week. Best band in the world.

Anyone who doesn't have Special Wishes at least as high as top 50 on their list of the best '00s albums just has shitty taste. This is something that I believe.

I need to see this band live. I also need to get that Anthem DVD.

It's awesome, yeah. Bought a used copy of the newer 2 DVD edition for like twelve bucks. Such a fucking steal. Seeing them evolve from sludgy noise rock to brutally slow death dirges to playing what sound like really fucking heavy Kiss songs to their totally triumphant reunion... incredibly sweet.

The late '90s stuff is my favorite to watch and made me run out and finally buy the copy of The Pleaser that had been sitting in Permanent Records for months until they finally just knocked it down to a sale price. The energy on that footage is fantastic and pretty much everything I want from a group of three guys just playing their rock songs in some shitty club. Kyle Spence totally channels the power of all the great classic hard rock drummers.

The weirdest thing is seeing Creston Spiers with short hair and looking sort of young. This is definitely one of those bands that has benefitted from a reunion and getting back into making music 'cause being older has allowed them to grow into that grizzled quality that their music has always possessed. Harvey Milk music is just meant to be played by a singer/guitarist that looks like this.

Another cool thing about the DVD: there's an easter egg in the credits menu of them playing three songs from Reckoning way back in the early/mid '90s. Solid renditions but the guys just look fucking funny doing them for what was probably an audience of very few people, it's awesome.

Here are the tracks from the 3" CD that came with the first Anthem. One earlier song, two Pleaser era tracks ("Anita Languished In Solitary Splendor, Jabbing Needles Into Her Buttocks" is so goddamn great, if they record a studio version I'll flip), and "So. Central Rain." Pretty lo-fi concert recording quality but still lots of fun, especially the two boogie rockers:

http://www.mediafire.com/?md2ytrgczew

this.

when i saw them during the winter, i was struck by how 'fuck it, let's do this' the band was. no frills, totally professional, which for a long-running sludge band is somehow impressive. they played a bunch of the new songs, some old stuff, and motown. was not disappointed in the least. but they've been old before their time. now they seem to have grown into their attitudes. fucking love this band.

This new albums is amazing, but I will through this alongside other records like the last Sunn 0))), where their brilliance is obvious, but living on a tropic island provides no real opportunity to be the the mood to listen to this. It's almost impossible.

i suggest you listen to the most recent earth records to get your fix of HM/sunn-esque sound that's totally appropriate for a tropical island. those records sound like what 8000*F sounds like.

Actually the last Earth album sounds great late at night... when it is ridiculously dark, yet still in the mid 80's.

Excited for my summer vacation to the states so I can digest the latest HM in a proper urban wasteland (Chicago).

Maybe I just spend too many of my nights staying up late listening to drainingly nihilistic noisy drone bullshit for hours on end, but even with the brutally pounding dirge tempo and Creston Spiers's death howl, this album is miles away from being something that I think of as "a mood thing." It's so tight and concise and there are so many brilliant ear catching moments of melody and harmony squeezed into less than 40 minutes.

It's just further evidence of their peerlessness that Harvey Milk operates in such a way that their more abrasive tendencies are always balanced out by aspirations for creating work that is incredibly musical and well produced to the point of being weirdly accessible and even if critics and the band members are talking about this album like it's a return to the "white space" brutality of Courtesy & Good Will Toward Men, in a lot of ways this is the most refined and fully formed summation of everything that they're capable of (which you could probably say about any of their last three records.)

Monoliths & Dimensions was an album that my perception of Sunn O))) and the nature of the music itself guaranteed that I'd have to spend a lot of time with it and hear it in different contexts for it to really unravel (which it's still doing), whereas A Small Turn of Human Kindness just plays like a fucking great rock record. So many wonderful moments on it and they're all very clear. I've mostly listened to it during the daytime, now that I think about it. And I usually play it a few times in a row. I definitely wore the fuck out of that NPR stream, anyway. Great album!

Klostermann : 80s metal :: Paves : drainingly nihilistic noisy drone bullshit

I was going to ask, in the Album Of The Year, 2010 thread for a Paves and/or Michael K. rundown on what made this album worth checking out. I've given Harvey Milk a bit of a chance before and, tbh don't think I liked it at all but I'm going to give this one a go based on your unmeasurable hard-on for them.

I like the off-kilter nature of this album; it keeps you on your toes. It makes me think of some fucked up realm created by Lovecraft, which of course is always a good thing.


I'm putting this on my list of AOTY with the new Mark Olson, Truckers and Ritter. The album cover is inexcusable, however.

what's wrong with it?

anyway poots: glad Paves gave his long-winded rundown because I'm not very good at album apologetics unless I'm in that particular mood. Basically, I agree with what he said. That said, if you haven't liked Harvey Milk before, I can't see this album changing your mind too much. But who the fuck knows, right? That stuff is unpredictable.

Dude, I'm just tryin' to grow up. Will this put hair on my chest?

it'll drop your testes, yeah.

Yep.

This is the manliest shit around.

salivating at the prospect of a montana vote for ASTOHK tipping the scales enough to have the record finish as the AOTY in the poll this december.