Milquetoast & Co.
Surreal music of all varieties has been having a big year in 2019, but few of the burgeoning trend’s most talented acts have been causing the stir that Milquetoast & Co. have with the news of their forthcoming extended play, Kashmir the Great. Kashmir the Great is a five-song smorgasbord of color, tonality, emotion and richly textured lyricism that is, at times, even more, postmodern than the music that it accompanies is. But while “Lost Coffee” and “Idiot” draw us in with their vortex of harmonies, other tracks like “Ghosts of the Keynote” and “No Speak So Good” rely on unsung melodies and an allusion to unspoken narratives that force listeners to think about what they’re hearing from a more existential point of view than they normally would.
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Nothing, and I really mean it when I say nothing, is recycled in the quintet of compositions that are contained in Kashmir the Great. Milquetoast & Co. are apparently willing to go to any lengths necessary to separate themselves from the mainstream “alternative” dribble that a less than erudite critic might have the nerve to compare their avant-gardism within this record, and that’s obvious to anyone who browses its tracklist. “No Speak So Good” has an almost neo-classical construction to its most flamboyant elements, and instead of translating as hopelessly unrefined, the conflicting components of the song are exactly what makes it so accessible. Audiences have been demanding more aesthetical obscurities in their music lately, and it’s plain to see thatMilquetoast & Co. are planning on answering their calls with everything that they’ve got in this latest record.
“Tell Me More” is overwhelmingly cerebral in certain spots, but like the other four songs that it’s next to in this tracklist, it’s never so removed from the outside world that it becomes difficult for the novice listener to enjoy and appreciate the statement that Restless James is trying to make here. Milquetoast & Co. have gotten really good at lacing layered storytelling into their music over the last year, and I think there’s no reason to believe that they couldn’t produce something just as ambitious as this project is on a full-length album scale sometime in the near future. They’re making all the right moves here, hitting all the right notes and diving into uncharted waters as though it were their own personal swimming pool, which isn’t exactly the norm in modern pop (to say the least).
Kashmir the Great isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea this September, but for real audiophiles who desire that perfect middle ground between the sagacious and outrageous, what Milquetoast & Co. recorded in these five songs is going to be hard for any band – American or not – too top before the year is over. This is a must-listen if you’ve been keeping tabs on the band since their original creation as a solo project for James McAndrew, but even if you’re just now discovering their zany name through the content of this review, “Tell Me More,” “Idiot” and the triplet of tracks that join them here are definite gold. As I see it, this is music made with great mental dexterity for the purposes of thinking and understanding our world and it’s a people just a bit better than we did before hearing it for the first time.
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Trace Whittaker
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
9/2019
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