The first full-length by Denver's the
Very Hush Hush, 2005's
Mourir C'est Facile, was a canny blend of epic reach and insular shoegazery noisemaking, roughly the midpoint between
Godspeed You Black Emperor! and
Swervedriver. The follow-up,
Evil Milk, is both more fragmentary and more overtly experimental, moving away from the debut's occasional stabs at noisy little pop songs into an overriding emphasis on texture and noise above all. Even more so than on
Mourir C'est Facile, the duo's vocals here are usually processed to near-unintelligibility, making the clarity of the stark but lovely voice and piano ballad closer "Gilded" all the more startling. The 16 songs prior to that, however, are mostly awash in layers of distortion, effects and feedback, both burying and mutating Grant Outerbridge and Peter Rappmund's organic instruments into eddies of inchoate sound. What saves the album from being mere self-indulgent noise is the obvious care of composition and structure, both in the songs themselves and in the pacing and flow of the album as a whole. For every track like the almost impenetrable "Simulation," which sounds like
My Bloody Valentine slowed to 16 RPM, there's a counterweight, like the somber piano instrumental "White Rain" or the comparatively catchy and accessible "Wisteria Hand," which has echoes of early
Neutral Milk Hotel. The sort of album that almost demands multiple close listens before it truly takes shape in the listener's mind,
Evil Milk does repay the attention it requires. ~ Stewart Mason