Tom Hughes 

Milk Maid: Mostly No – review

Milk Maid's second album is a dreamy, lightly frazzled affair that only occasionally takes flight, writes Tom Hughes
  
  


The second album from Manchester's Milk Maid – not to be confused with the terrific US band Milk Music – is part dreamy British indie and part frazzled US psych-rock, albeit perhaps never quite as dreamy or frazzled as it could have been. Bandleader Martin Cohen, formerly of Nine Black Alps, sets the tone straight away with opener Dopamine, as its big, sunny guitar jangle and reverb-heavy vocal give way to a minor paisley explosion of feedback and woozy wailing. The tempo shifts quickly up on the stompier, garagey Do Right, the scene of more guitar-led storm fronts and a melody that motors away nicely, before Stir So Slow settles back into the album's predominant mid-to-slow pace. Mostly No's sound is a pretty familiar one – the Jesus and Mary Chain loom large in particular – which does burst into bloom here and there (Your Neck Around Mine's overflowing hooks, Old Trick's gorgeous coda), but there's also a sense of pedals unstamped-on and wigs unflipped that makes you wonder if it could all have gone further.

 

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