Fox Reviews Rock

Introduction

Bringing delicious psychedelic rock is the brilliantly named Milk For The Angry! Following their latest release “Powder Trails On Fire” , we caught up with them and was thoroughly entertained by their answers. One of which did not make this interview! Enjoy those that did though!

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Spotify

Interview

I’d love to know where the band name came from? Also, more importantly what flavour milk do the angry enjoy the most? I’m a strawberry man myself.

The band name came from some weird, wild day dream years ago and I’ve been asking myself what the hell it means ever since. I think of that moment when a crying baby gets it’s “ba ba” and you see that quick shift from sheer panic to calm relief.

Maybe milk is the thing that brings you back to your true, un-jaded baby self? When I reach for the “ba ba” I want that uncut, full fat, red cap, cream on top goodness. Strauss is a mighty fine brand.

I think it’s important to take a deep dive into someone’s music when coming up with questions for an interview… If you had to pick one song from your debut album “Make Like An Animal” as your favourite, which song are you picking and why?

“Like Lemonade” would be my pick because it feels like the first song that really captured what we were after. It’s like we found our footing with that one. It’s also a song that we still love playing live to this day!

Can you let us know about maybe a couple of local bands that we might not know about that you think absolutely rock?

Yeah! The Snares from Sacramento, Juicebumps from SF, PSDSP from Marin County, Diesel Dudes from Oakland, and Magic Fig from SF.

The title track from your 2019 album “Extraterrestrial Desert” has me wondering, what exactly would that desert look like? Also do you believe in aliens?

I imagine the ground being fine grain color changing sand and the mountains jetting up to the sky like those crystals we used to grow in water as kids. The mirages would deceive you and depict scenes from back on Earth that seduce you to come closer.

The wind would whip and whistle and play spooky tunes that all the little eyes that peek from behind rocks would sway to. I think that WE are the aliens that other planets contemplate believing in. 

If Milk For The Angry was an animal, which animal would it be , and why?

Without a doubt a raccoon. It thrives at night, lives on garbage. Can be cute, can be nasty. Wears funny little bandit masks. The only thing they do that we don’t is wash each bite of food before we eat it. We barely wash our hands!

Moving to the present day the new album “Powder Trails On Fire” starts off with “Orange Flavored Lozenge” which btw I really dig! I was wondering if you would be able to break down this song for us, what inspired it?

Well awhile back my friend gave me a few orange flavored ketamine lozenges, I guess he got them for depression. I decided to go on a hike up in the woods behind my house and popped a couple in my mouth along the way.

I totally underestimated how much they would blast me off and I ended up lying on my back in the middle of the trail, looking up at the trees and sky. Luckily no one walked by during that time and I had a pretty profound experience. I may have had several more profound experiences after that one too…

Can you tell us a funny story that you have witnessed or been a part of during your shows or touring?

Well we were in Seattle and really wanted to eat at this one Chinese restaurant. But the problem was that we had all our gear in the van and couldn’t find parking anywhere close. 

So our bass player suggested that we FaceTime one of our phones and leave it in the van, acting as a little makeshift security camera, with audio. We were thrilled with this idea and walked a good four blocks to get to this restaurant feeling pretty good about our new system.

Right after we ordered Michael was like “hey wait listen!” We all huddle around the phone and heard this tapping sound. It was dark outside so we couldn’t really see too much detail, but we definitely were hearing a tapping sound. It started getting more intense and finally we all decided that someone was definitely breaking in.

We all jumped up and sprinted down the street, ready to fight this intruder. But when we approached the coast was clear. It took us a second, but finally we realized that the tapping sound was just rain. Seattle god damn rain.

I’ve been looking through your albums and I noticed that gold or golden crops up a fair few times. Why is this?

Gold is a good word! It can mean beauty, it can mean greed. It’s really heavy, but also really soft. But most importantly it rhymes with a lot of other words.

From 2020 “Skin & Bones” from the “Gliders” album is a song that just gets me moving! Especially the first section. I was wondering though would you be able to tell us about the typical Milk For The Angry recording studio habits that you have?

You know I still don’t think we have a “go to” method. There’s just a lot of ways to go about recording a song and I think each one needs to be approached uniquely. Our first two records we’re tracked with the whole band in the room, but the later ones got a bit more “overdubby”. Really just because I wanted to be in the engineers seat while we we’re doing takes. 

All of our albums we’re initially self produced for money reasons, but now it’s just how we love to do it. Sometimes I think I like recording more than playing live. It feels like something you can do forever. I have a makeshift studio in a warehouse space and that’s where most of our recording is done. Sometimes we’ll track drums in a nicer studio, but then take it back to our bat cave to finish it off. 

If you could play at any festival in the world, which are you picking and why?

Man I dunno… I’ve seen some videos of festivals in Europe that look amazing and seem to beat anything we have here in the states. I can’t name a single one, but it sure does feel like the promise land for bands. So yeah, one of those!

How has the feedback from fans been for the latest album?

Purdy good! We were excited to see how many people bought records and folks had some nice things to say.

If you could change anything about any of your songs postproduction, which song is it and what would you change?

Man there’s some I just want to delete completely. But the first thing that came to mind is re-tracking the bass for Skin & Bones. Our new bass player added some nice elements to it and I wish that was on the record. But no looking back!

“Doors Of Dismay” has me wondering, what in the current world has you concerned?

Yeah I can see why you asked that question… I didn’t really mean to make that song so sad sounding. It just comes from a place of peaceful dissociation where things like your name and address start to feel like just silly details. There’s a lot that concerns me about our current world, so that’s why this place feels like a happy one.

Final question. Would you rather have lizard skin and owl eyes, or owl feathers and lizard eyes? And why?!

Good one! Well if I had owl feathers I would also get owl wings right? I’ll roll the dice and go with owl feathers and lizard eyes.

All rights to the songs used in this interview are retained by Milk For The Angry. This site claims no rights over them. All images were provided by Milk For The Angry.