Milky Wimpshake - Encore, Un Effort! (2015)

Milky Wimpshake return with a brand new album of melodic punk indie-pop, splattered with Pete Dale's wry lyrics and simple, direct guitar riffs. The album features several duets with Sophie Evans, who sings on over half the songs, adding both a sweetness and a sassyness to their sound. These duets show different sides to relationships from shyness to bickering and from lust to indifference. The album also sees a return to "political" (as opposed to purely romantic) concerns on songs like 'Le Revolution Politique' - Pete's first ever song written in French, calling for political revolution, 'Coming Soon' - a hymn to the messianic arrival of anarcho-socialist revolution, proposing that there can be no war but the class war, and the cover of Onsind (featuring members of Martha)'s 'Heterosexuality is a Construct'. As Pete explains: "The song is pretty unambiguous: love is not a crime and homophobia should never be tolerated. Ever." The album title Encore, Un Effort! is an old Marxist slogan popular in France and used by, for example, Situationist Rene Vienet in his 1977 film Chinois, Encore Un Effort Pour Etre Revolutionnaires (One More Effort, Chinese, If You Want to be Revolutionaries). To some extent, though, the 'encore' is Milky Wimpshake's: who would have thought they would still be going some twenty odd years since the first tape and 7" singles? This LP is an added extra for the die-hards who've stuck with the band - or, continuing with our french, a port manteaux for those who have never come across the band before.Milky Wimpshake were formed by Pete in 1993 with Christine Rowe joining the band on bass in early 1994. A number of drummers have appeared over the course of half a dozen LPs, but the latest drummer Mike Walsh will hopefully be a permanent addition. The newest member of the band, Sophie Evans, wasn't even born when the band played their first gig but she is not the only one who has grown up coming to Milky Wimpshake shows: the band has a small but enthusiastic cult following. The band have now been recording for Fortuna Pop for 15 years and they love the label more and more as the years pass: Pete recently declared that "Fortuna Pop is the best label in the UK, bar none!" and went on to say; "it is obvious that the likes of Spook School, Martha and Joanna Gruesome are amazing, thus it is an honour for the band to stay on Fortuna Pop" To which we say, nous vous aimons trop Milky Wimpshake!