The Very Hush Hush, Evil Milk

reviewed by hiram lucke

I’ve been imagining Oakland’s The Very Hush Hush working within a very large and lonely space ship filled with buzzing monitors and gauze-like cobwebs as the songs on Evil Milk move in and out of the silent maze of corridors. Tempos build to a full run via drum machines, keyboards, delayed guitars, and reverbed vocals as if there’s something chasing them and then slow to introspection as your childhood friend’s face appears on a monitor. Bundles of distorted wires lay in the hallways. Discordant soundscapes give way to a sad distant piano. Transmissions are cut short. Messages are mumbled and garbled beyond coherence. Uplifting melodies point to the sun while sparks shoot from the wall just in front of you.

The thing is, I can’t stop thinking of this album in terms of space. Evil Milk is the alternate soundtrack to movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Sunshine (or place your favorite science fiction movie about alienation and human-emotion-through-machinery here). The band’s music falls somewhere near early M83 and Sigur Rós with its distance and longing wrapped in dense sound. It’s a beautiful album for staring at the stars (even if those stars may be just glow in the dark plastic on your bedroom ceiling).

{theveryhushhush.com, http://www.saobentomusic.com/bands/tvhh}