Album Review: Millie Manders & The Shut Up - "Telling Truths, Breaking Ties"

 

We're slightly late off the mark with this one as it came out late last year but Millie Manders & The Shut Up are one of those bands who seem to have been picking up a lot of mentions of late so we decided to give this a spin to see what all the fuss is about.

The phrase "21st century punk" is one that's overused a bit and, for those with longer memories it may bring up unpleasant fratpunk-related memories but Telling Truths, Breaking Ties is definitely an album that merits the tag. The energy and anger of '77 is here but this is definitely a more modern take on the formula with the clean crisp production and use of Gold Blade style horns on several tracks showing a group trying to take the sound off to somewhere it hasn't really been regularly before. There's a nod to groups like the Skints on the spoken word likes of Bitter and the dubby Poor Man's Show but they're different enough to the likes of the above that you couldn't ever describe them as copyists. The gentle junkie lament Glitter Mix is another good curveball which shows that Millie has a pretty good voice on her as well as being able to scream her venom and shows the versatility of the band musically. Not Okay even sounds like My Chemical Romance with the tedious drama queen theatrics replaced by genuine panic and anger.

Lyrically, the themes are pretty universal ones - heartbreak (Your Story), depression (Here We Go Again (Black Dog), Not Okay) and political anger (Poor Man's Show and the environmental crisis referencing Panic) but Manders has enough energy and ferocity to her voice that she sounds sincere and that the words hit home with lethal precision.

All in all, I was very impressed by this - Millie Manders & the Shut-Up are a band with their heads screwed on who know that while it's always good to keep the energy and anger of your forebears, punk music has to keep moving forward if it's to survive and not become an irrelevant museum piece. Essentially then they'er the anti-Greta Van Fleet and I can think of no better recommendation for you to go and give Telling Truths, Breaking Ties a listen than that.

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sounds From The Junkshop #43 - The Yo-Yo's

Image
  "Too much too soon is not enough..."  - The Yo-Yo's  - Keep On Keepin' On So welcome to what can best be described as Wildhearts Weekend here at Nite Songs. Tomorrow and Sunday we'll finally be carrying on with the band story wot we started way back last August by looking at the various projects the group members got up to after their messy split in 1997 as well as a little bit on their initial reunion in the early years of the millennium. This bit on the Yo-Yo's was originally meant to form part of that side projects column but after reading it through and realising that it actually expands quite a bit outside the Wildhearts story frame, I thought it was deserving of its own SFTJ entry. Plus, they were an awesome band who I used to follow quite avidly back around the turn of the millennium so they definitely deserve a full column to themselves. There Yo-Yo's were formed by Danny McCormack after the Wildhearts went on hiatus, and I remember a great quot
Read more

Album Review: The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs - "All The Covers (And More)"

Image
  Covers albums are an odd beast and the prospect of a 40 track one would've been a cause for me to shudder in certain circumstances. However, given that the band behind this are Nite Songs faves the Streetwalkin' Cheetahs, a quick cursory glance at the tracklisting will tell you that we're on safe ground. Hand on heart, quite a few of the tracks are already available on previous Cheetahs albums but it still doesn't make their takes on the Saints' Know Your Product  and the Dictators' Faster And Louder  any less fun. There's the odd mis-step in here - their speeded up take on the Dogs D'Amour's Debauchery  ends up sounding more like Queen's Stone Cold Crazy . But the good stuff here far outweighs the bad with the group teaming up with none other than Cherie Currie for a good run through the Runaways' Cherry Bomb and the group adding a much needed dose of extra urgency to Motley Crue's Livewire  to remind you that the Crue actually had a f
Read more

Album Review: Simon & The Astronauts - "Simon & The Astronauts"

Image
  We first became aware of psychedelic folkie types Simon & The Astronauts via their rather lovely Walking In London  single a couple of months back which was reminiscent of a less annoyingly twee Belle & Sebastian. It piqued my interest sufficiently to give their album a listen and I'm happy that I did. What we've got here essentially is an enjoyably tuneful slice of indie-pop which has been given a 21st century nip and tuck to keep it interesting and varied. Hence while the likes of the defiant  I Have A Name  and the bubbling Pay It Back and 10 League Boots , which conjures up the image of Dubstar covering one of No Doubt's gentle ballads, a not unpleasant sound, deliver on the tunes, The Kiss That Landed  goes into classic girl group territory and All My Days is a sinister poison waltz. Elsewhere, they dip their toes into winsome Beatles-y psychedelia ( Athena) , Strawberry Switchblade style goth-pop ( I Do ) and heartstring-tugging laments to lost times (the af
Read more