Released: 27th March 2020
Rating: ★★★★
While there’s often little significance in bands deciding to self-title a record, there’s something poignant in Milk Teeth’s decision to do so. Ending a four-year struggle with line-up changes, mental health battles and the weight of the world seemingly crashing down, Milk Teeth have finally found their natural formation.
The weathering of Milk Teeth over the years is clear in the lyricism of this album. Partially, the record balances the ending of one toxic relationship with the emergence of the kind of love that lets you finally show your scars, but mostly it serves to document the recent past of Becky Blomfield. While Becky has always let her life experience seep into the band’s music, there’s no mystery in the lyrics on this album, some of the best moments are songs like ‘Dilute’ or ‘Medicine’ which flaunt clear messages and lay everything out onto record. Whether it’s ‘Flowers’, featuring some of the best punk vocal lines since Billie Joe Armstrong on ‘Insomniac, or ‘Better’ sounding like an unheard track circa Placebo’s debut, this Milk Teeth S/T is a 90s alt-rock classic with the very best of modern sensibilities.
Ending is the line, “I’m not fine, but I want to be,” which sums up the entirety of the switching feelings of hopelessness, anger and contentedness that swing around the record. Milk Teeth have always been a cyclone of emotion, but this is the kind of album that can only come from a band who believed they had seen the end. Whether it gets the plaudits it deserves or not, ‘Milk Teeth’ is a seminal album for the modern brit-rock movement.
Paris Fawcett
