Author: sayitwithgarageflowers

‘We love records that sound like they’ve been made by a group of musicians in a room’

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The Milk

We speak to cinematic soulsters The Milk about their superb and ambitious new album, Borderlands, which has been influenced by acts such as Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Miles Davis and Michael Kiwanuka.

This month, Essex four-piece The Milk – Rick Nunn (vocals, keys), Mitch Ayling (drums), Luke Ayling (bass), and Dan Le Gresley (guitar) – release their fourth album, Borderlands. The band met at school and bonded over a shared love of music, particularly a fondness for soul.

Borderlands, which features the Soul Choir and other guest musicians on trumpet, saxophone, flute, violin and viola, is The Milk’s most ambitious and fully realised record yet – a stunning set of cinematic soul songs that draws on influences old and new, including Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Kamasi Washington, Michael Kiwanuka and Thundercat.

Reviewing the record for this month’s issue of consumer magazine Hi-Fi+, I called it, ‘a melting pot of ‘60s and ‘70s-style soul, modern funk and jazz, and vintage film soundtracks.’

I added: ‘Like all the best records, this album takes you on an emotional journey and is designed to be listened to in one sitting – it’s a coherent piece of work that starts with the striking and filmic I Need Your Love and closes with the epic love song, I Saved My Best For You, with its silver screen strings.’

To get the full story behind the making of Borderlands, Say It With Garage Flowers went for a couple of beers with Nunn in an East London pub on a warm July evening.

“We’re very much into making a body of songs that has a beginning, a middle and an end – that’s how I listen to music at home,” he says. “I like the commitment of putting a record on and then having 40 or 45 minutes when I don’t need to make another decision.”

So, we settled in and listened to what he had to say…

Q&A

Borderlands was recorded over the last 12 months or so at your drummer Mitch Ayling’s Woods Lodge Studio in the Essex countryside, with the band playing every track live in the room together…

Rick Nunn: That’s something that we’re very attached to – it’s a bit of a dying art form. We work well as a rhythm section, and we have to try and capitalise on that – we love records that sound like they’ve been made by a group of musicians in a room. We went for a big, ‘70s wall of sound-type production, but we still wanted it to be anchored around a four-man rhythm section – that was important for us.

Did you have a definite idea of the kind of album you wanted to make – it’s a big and ambitious-sounding record…

Rick Nunn: We spent about a year arguing about the references and batting ideas around, and eventually we all gave in and said, ‘Let’s make something huge.’

People who like soul music will hopefully like it, but we also just wanted to make something that was a talking point in itself – even if it’s not your thing, it’s a big-sounding record.

‘We went for a big, ‘70s wall of sound-type production, but we still wanted it to be anchored around a four-man rhythm section – that was important for us’

Our studio is a lovely retreat – we’re lucky to have it and it means we’ve got total control of the process. Yeah, we could’ve made a stripped-back record, but we’ve done that before. We’ve got a unique space where we’ve got the option to make a huge-sounding record – the kind of record that if you were playing on the clock, it would cost a fucking fortune. Very few bands have got the resources or the budget to do that – to make that kind of high-production, mid-‘70s soul record.

The album was mastered on vintage analogue equipment by Lewis Durham (Kitty, Daisy & Lewis) at Durham Sound Studios in Camden, North London. Are you into vintage gear?

Rick Nunn: I think it can sometimes be a distraction. The reason the Snakepit [Motown studio in Detroit] sounds like the Snakepit is because the Motown band sounds like the Motown band… You can buy all those microphones if you want, but it’s a very small part of the sound – you can’t just chuck a load of dusty mics at a band…

Let’s talk about some of the tracks on the album. I Need Your Love is a song in two halves – the first half was inspired by a 4/8 bar cyclical brass hook from a jazz standard played by a big band tribute to Buddy Rich at Ronnie Scott’s. There’s a nod to the vintage cinema Pearl & Dean theme, and also a section from an old soul ballad of yours that had never been released…

Rick Nunn: We love a gear shift in a track. We were playing around with it… I’m a massive jazz fan, but we didn’t want to just make a jazz track. I think there are people that do that better than we do it. We were struggling with the chorus, and I had this straight-up soul record that the boys liked, but, as a standalone track, it wasn’t getting on the record, and then we brought it in, and we were like, ‘ah,’ so that was an interesting gear shift… It’s a kind of Frankenstein track…

I like the nod to the Pearl & Dean theme on it… It’s a great way to open the record…

Rick Nunn: Yeah – it’s track one on an album that we’re saying is a cinematic soul record… The curtains open…

I love the horns and there’s a great electric guitar solo on it too…

Rick Nunn: Dan, our guitarist, is insane – I just love the way he plays. It’s a difficult thing doing soul lead guitar – soul solos are not that common, but I think he makes it relevant.

Pangs of Love was inspired harmonically by Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney, but it also has a great, ‘70s-style, fuzz guitar sound that reminds me of The Isley Brothers…

Rick Nunn: Yeah, and we also reference Michael Kiwanuka, who uses a good, similar fuzz sound. So, we would often use on all those references you’ve talked about, but the most recent one would have been him. He uses that fuzz, one-note stuff…

Pangs of Love reminds me of Doves too… They’ve always had a soul influence…

Rick Nunn – Yeah. They had an album with the word ‘soul’ in it – Lost Souls, which was their first album. When I was 11 or 12 and I’d just started going to gigs, Doves seemed to be on every bill. They’re excellent, and in an era where there wasn’t a lot of soul references, they were introducing kids to a lot of soul stuff. I even like the trippier Doves stuff, like The Cedar Room.

A Time To Let Go on your new album is a personal song inspired by the death of your father…

Rick Nunn: Yeah – it’s about my old man. The boys knew my dad from when they were little boys… We don’t have to tell each other what we’re writing about. I can walk in with a song like that, and everyone goes, ‘okay…’ Or if Mitch walks in with a song that’s about a breakup, I know what he’s singing about, you know… So, I walked in with that song…

‘It’s something that feels beyond transcendent. Brian Wilson was a fucking genius at that stuff, and so is Kamasi Washington’

You wrote it on piano…

Rick Nunn: Yeah – it was a confessional piano song…

And then, inspired by Brian Wilson, you threw the kitchen sink at it, with a heavenly choir, brass and a soaring string arrangement…

Rick Nunn: It’s something that feels beyond transcendent. Brian Wilson was a fucking genius at that stuff, and so is Kamasi Washington – that kind of transcendent soul choir.

Morning Light is more reminiscent of your previous album, Cages – it’s spacious and stripped-back…

Rick Nunn: Yeah – it’s a lot more like the album we made previously, when we were signed to Wah Wah 45s – a lovely, small North London soul/jazz label. We made a more stripped-back, modern soul record, which I love, and I think that track probably leans more towards those times. But we do a bit where it gets quite big towards the end, with the last section. You want a little bit of a gear shift, even with the pace of a 10-track album.

When you’re making an album, do you think of it in terms of being a vinyl LP?

Rick Nunn: We’re very much into making a body of songs that has a beginning, a middle and an end – that’s how I listen to music at home. I like the commitment of putting a record on and then having 40 or 45 minutes when I don’t need to make another decision.

I think streaming and downloading took that away to a certain extent, but then the vinyl revival has brought it back…  There are still some people who stream but don’t listen to an album from start to finish – they skip to different tracks…

Rick Nunn: The amount of people who love a song, but they don’t know who the fucking artist is because they’re just liking it and adding it to a playlist…

So, the middle track on Borderlands is called The Middle – I see what you did there – and it started off as an acoustic song that was demoed for your album Favourite Worry…

Rick Nunn: Yeah – our demo bank is fucking huge. It’s a collective creative project and it’s more about what ideas are best rather than whose ideas are best. We’re like old pirates – everything gets chucked in the middle and everyone gets an equal cut – there are no egos.

The title track has a big, symphonic soul sound – it soars…

Rick Nunn: It’s a weird song – when you play it on piano, it has a rolling rhythm…

Lyrically, was it inspired by Brexit and the EU?

Rick Nunn: I think that’s something we’ve projected onto it after the event – I don’t think that’s what we were talking about… It’s more about that Bruce Springsteen thing that he’s always saying – packing a car, driving out of town and heading for the sunset – what’s over the next hill? The last people to get out of town…. I love it,  and I think it’s Mitch’s best achievement on the record in terms of the production and how it’s mixed – there’s an alarming number of musical elements going on in that track, but I can choose what I want to listen to on it. That’s testament to a well-mixed track.

Wanted Man is the jazziest track on the record – it was inspired by John Coltrane and Miles Davis…

Rick Nunn: Yeah – the boys let me get away with that one. There’s an early Miles Davis  [soundtrack] album, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud – Lift to the Scaffold – which was the first time that he went to Paris – he was relatively young and he was taken aback by the egalitarian nature of Parisian culture – he embraced the intelligentsia, and he fell in love with the fact that as a black man, he could go there and be held in such high regard in terms of high society –  and he was hanging out with some very cool academic people.

He fell in love with a Parisian woman, and then he was hanging out with a film director, and he was ask to improvise live to an Art Nouveau movie that was being shot at the time, and they gave him a Parisian rhythm section who he’d never met before.

I watched an interview with the drummer who said that Miles improvised live to the movie while it was being projected. I gave that direction to our trumpet player, Don, and said: ‘Can do you that?’ He said he knew it… Most of what you hear of Don is the first take, apart from a couple of little edits.

You’ve described the album as ‘cinematic soul’ – the final song, I Saved My Best For You, feels like a track that should be played over the end credits of a film. It starts with just a guitar and vocal, but then it shifts into something immense, with a big arrangement and an epic finale…

Rick Nunn: I’ve got a big, old school, semi-acoustic Gretsch – we did that live, as a single take, and then we recorded the whole back end as a separate thing. We’re massive fans of Vegas-era Elvis, and the band that was put together, so we were like, ‘let’s do that!’

We wanted to make it sound like fucking Casablanca! Unashamedly, we know what we’re doing, and we want people to know that – we’re not trying to pretend we’re not doing it…

It’s a love song too…

Rick Nunn: I only met my missus a few years ago, and it’s a message to her to say, ‘It’s been great, but I’ve saved the best stuff for you, and it’s gonna get even better because you’re here.’

 

Borderlands is released on September 19: vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming platforms: www.thisisthemilk.com.

September and October tour dates:

  • September 19:  229, London.
  • September 20:  Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham-by-Sea.
  • September 26:  Band On The Wall, Manchester.
  • September  27:  Subscription Rooms, Stroud.
  • October 18:  The Old Town Hall, Hemel Hempstead. Acoustic show.

‘If I was as successful now as I was in Carter, I’d probably get cancelled quite quickly!’

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Wry, observational singer-songwriter and author, Jim Bob, one half of ‘90s ‘punk Pet Shop Boys’ and indie-rockers, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, is releasing two-brand new studio albums on the same day (August 22) – the full-band record, Automatic, and its dirtier, punkier cousin, Stick, which was made with a power three-piece.

To celebrate the release of both 11-track albums, Say It With Garage Flowers is running two interviews with Jim Bob.

This one focuses on Stick while the first chat, which is here, concentrates on Automatic.

“Stick is more old-fashioned – less polished. It’s like a Morris Minor Traveller, whereas Automatic is like a Lotus or something,” he explains.

 

Q&A

I’m assuming that you named the albums after types of cars: Automatic and Stick? Stick means manual – as in gear stick, but it’s not a common phrase these days…

Jim Bob: I thought everybody would know that, but then I have realised they don’t…

I had to look it up…

Jim Bob: Stick is more old-fashioned – less polished. It’s like a Morris Minor Traveller, whereas Automatic is like a Lotus or something…

So, let’s talk about Stick – it explores some of the themes that you sing about on Automatic, including war and escaping from the chaos of modern society.

I Will Still Be Here deals with the apocalypse – when all the world’s gone to shit, you’ll still be there for your partner, with wine in the fridge and her favourite snacks…

Jim Bob: Yeah – it’s like those sort of songs like Everybody Hurts [R.E.M.] and Lean On Me [Bill Withers]… You know – maybe everything’s shit, but you know you can rely on me, for what it’s worth.

I guess when the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, you can always take a walk in the park… which leads us rather nicely to I Go To The Park – a song about getting back to nature…

Jim Bob: I wanted to write songs quite quickly – about anything… Something I started doing this year was going to the park and walking, early in the morning – usually where there’d be a coffee shop at the end of it. I almost became addicted to it… If I didn’t go for a walk in the morning, I’d be a bit…

Was it the walking or the coffee you were addicted to?

Jim Bob: The walk, I think, but it could be both… I do find myself doing a lot of the same walks, like Dulwich Park – the walk there from my house is quite nice. Crystal Palace is close, but that’s massive and I have to walk along the main road to get there… So, it’s not just the park – it’s the journey to it. I think I could just sit there for hours – I’ve got a garden, but I don’t sit out there as much as I do in the park.

‘It’s probably one of the most outrageous puns I’ve written since Carter’

Do you come up with ideas for songs while you’re walking?

Jim Bob: Yeah – that’s the other reason for walking. So, I get ideas for lyrics when I’m at home, but most of them get written while I’m walking around…

Earlier, we talked about the apocalypse. You address it in the song (Oh What A) Shitshow – you sing about making an end-of-days playlist, and listening to Love Train or Heroes while the carousel turns, or sitting outside Caffè Nero and watching as Rome burn… I see what you did there – that’s a clever lyric…

Jim Bob: That’s probably one of the most outrageous puns I’ve written since Carter. All the worst people in the world – all the terrible leaders and dictators – are the kind of people that always look like they will cause the end of the world, but they’re obsessed by their own wealth, so maybe they’ll kill hundreds of people, but they’ll stop short of destroying the world.

‘I’m sure that’s what awful people, like dictators, are like – they bomb Gaza and then they go off and have lunch’

On Walk The Dog Start A War, you juxtapose everyday chores, like walking the dog, mowing the lawn and taking the bins out, with horrendous acts like starting a war, buying a gun, shooting up a village and ordering an air strike…

Jim Bob: I’m sure that’s what awful people, like dictators, are like – they bomb Gaza and then they go off and have lunch. It’s just another part of the day, isn’t it? That’s sort of the idea of the song – the same person that’s walking the dog and washing the car is also ordering an air strike on a village…

So, from everyday chores to being a pop star – there’s a song called The Last Night of the Tour on Stick. Did you enjoy touring in Carter and how do you feel about gigging now?

Jim Bob: It’s a lot different now – my memory of it was that I enjoyed it, especially the early years because it was exciting and different. When we were really successful, I enjoyed that less, but everyone says that, don’t they? ‘Success is not good for you…’

There was more sitting around, waiting to do a gig and drinking too much, and then doing it again for long periods of time, but now, because I do so few gigs, and everyone’s more grown up… well, I say that, but maybe not always grown up… It doesn’t go on forever, but I think if I did a tour that was 100 dates long or something, like we used to, then I’m sure we’d fall out quite quickly.

Carter USM

Did you tour in the States much when you were in Carter?

 

Jim Bob: Yeah – we did. The first time was when we were supporting EMF – we were doing massive venues and staying in posh hotels. That was great, because EMF were number one in America at the time – then we went back and did more university venues. The last American Carter tour we did was awful – no one went to the gigs. I think that was my worst experience of touring – mainly because there was no audience! (Laughs).

The Last Night of the Tour feels like it was written about a contemporary pop star…

Jim Bob: Yeah – I think Taylor Swift set me off on that, even though I imagine she’s nothing like she is in the song. I think I’d seen a lot of those videos where she’s just walking surrounded by photographers, and she’s got about 10 bodyguards, and they’re pushing people out the way. It’s not her [in the song] – it’s about somebody who has to go back [after the tour] and there’s no escape – I imagine it must be a bit like that.

In the final song on Stick, which is There’s Not Enough Space In The Hall, you sing: ‘What are we going to do with all the things we’ve got to say? There aren’t enough hours in the day…’

That made me a laugh, because I thought: ‘You’ve just said it all on two albums!’ Twenty-two songs, but there’s still a lot more to say…

Jim Bob: (Laughs).

In the same song, you say: ‘I’d like to keep my thoughts to myself once in a while or just shut my mouth, but I know that’s not my style…’  Are you opinionated at home? Do you shout at the telly?

Jim Bob: Not as much as I used to. If I was as successful now as I was in Carter, I’d probably get cancelled quite quickly! Or maybe not cancelled, but I think I’d be getting in constant arguments. I have a lot of opinions that I don’t bother sharing because either they’re too nuanced or I’d just end up in an argument with one group of people…

‘You do get a lot of politically-motivated bands but it doesn’t tend to be in the songs… There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you feel that passionate about something, why wouldn’t you sing about it?’

Are you surprised that a lot more contemporary artists don’t tackle politics in their songs? I guess they worry about it from a commercial point of view – trying to sell records. That doesn’t bother you, does it?

Jim Bob: I’m fairly non-specific – it’s not clear what I’m saying, and maybe it never has been. I could be wrong, because obviously I haven’t listened to all music, but I still think that now you do get a lot of politically-motivated bands but it doesn’t tend to be in the songs… There’s nothing wrong with that, but it kind of surprises me. If you feel that passionate about something, why wouldn’t you also sing about it?

Have you got a favourite one of the two new albums? Is it Automatic or Stick?

Jim Bob: If I’m brutally honest, I genuinely like them both. Stick was enjoyable to do because it was just ‘crash, bang, wallop –  here we go…’ I enjoyed that side of it.

I played all the guitar on that one – there’s no Jen Macro on it. I love Jen’s playing – she tends to do things that I’m never going to think of. I’d rather listen to other people than me, so, in a way, my favourite bits are the bits that I’m not on… So, in that sense, I probably prefer Automatic, but only because it’s got less of me on it.

So, what’s next? A triple album?

Jim Bob: Yeah – if only we could sell it.

The last time we spoke was for your 2023 album, Thanks For Reaching Out, which was the final record in a loose, unplanned trilogy. So you’ve done a trilogy and now you’re releasing two albums on the same day…

Jim Bob: Yeah, but when it’s what you do, it’s difficult to see everything in a career-based way and say, ‘Right – what we should do now is take three years and then we’ll do this…’ I’m also pretty old – well, in my mind anyway.

And all my favourite bands, like The Jam, Elvis Costello [and The Attractions] and The Clash, used to bang out an album a year, and they did singles – they didn’t used to wait, did they?

I’ve been reading that [new] Lennon and McCartney book [John and Paul: A Love Story In Songs by Ian Leslie]. It’s really good – they’re doing the stuff that’s taking ages in the studio, and they’re on LSD and they’ve got orchestras coming in… It’d never been done before, but it was only three years after they’d been playing The Cavern, or something…

And when they were doing Rubber Soul and Revolver, they couldn’t replicate some of those songs live…

Jim Bob: It’s like a 25-year career in five years, by modern standards.

‘All my favourite bands, like The Jam, Elvis Costello and The Clash, used to bang out an album a year, and they did singles – they didn’t used to wait, did they?

In the ‘90s, a lot of Britpop bands just stuck strings on some of their songs for the sake of it, when the record companies gave them a bigger studio budget…

Jim Bob: Yeah – really boring strings. I hate it when they do the BBC Proms or whatever, and they’ll have someone like Elbow on, with a 26-piece orchestra… but when it’s done properly, it’s brilliant.

I saw the Quadrophenia ballet [Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet] and I thought it was brilliant, but then I love Quadrophenia… That had orchestral versions of the songs.

So, maybe your next record could be a triple orchestral ballet soundtrack album?

Jim Bob: That seems the logical next step.

Automatic and Stick are both released on the same day – August 22, on Cherry Red Records.

To launch the albums, Jim Bob and co will be playing Stick in full at Banquet Records in Kingston (August 22) and Automatic in full at Rough Trade East (August 23).

Read the first part of our interview here.

https://jimbob3.bandcamp.com/album/automatic