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Harvey Milk, like most if not all other bands, has been the subject of only semi-accurate comparisons to the influential groups that have gone before them during the course of the career.
Most frequent among these has been a comparison to the power trio the Melvins, which started out in Washington in the early '80s. But even that infers other comparisons to older-still godfathers like Black Sabbath and Black Flag. While some of the distinguishing characteristics are there -- the slow, steady grind of creamy distortion-laden guitars, deep, guttural vocals, more snarling than singing, and thundering bass notes and drums reminiscent of that scene with the T-Rex in Jurassic Park -- the similarities end there.
Unique are the off tempo rhythms and unexpected stops, a penchant for
playing between notes and against what the ear demands. It's a facet of
the music the band attributes to vocalist/guitarist Creston Spiers'
unique ear, his ability to, "hear things differently." But bassist
Stephen Tanner and drummer Kyle Spence add to the unpredictable
unfolding of the band's every song commendably, at times almost as
though each member plays independently of the others and somehow it all
comes together by mere cosmic chance.
Though they've accepted comparisons as a natural byproduct of being a band, Spence admitted in a recent phone conversation with New Times
from home in Athens, Georgia, that after 15 years it's still
irritating. He also shed some light on the history and the future of
this underrated band.
New Times: The band started in '92 with Creston, Stephen and Paul Trudeau on drums, then split in '98 and rejoined with you in 2006?
Paul
left in '96 and I played from '96 to '98, and then we quit playing and
went to do our own stuff. Then in '05 Paul and the other guys started
playing a little bit again, they did a few shows, and they recorded
special issues and I helped out with that. So it was sort of like we
all started back again at the same time.
How would you compare the two incarnations of the band, on each side of the 10-year gap?
There's
some pretty big differences, you know? Now, in a lot of ways it's a lot
cooler. Because, shit, 15 years have gone by. So people have actually
heard the band by now and they'll come see us and buy the records. And
that wasn't the case back then. That's for sure.
And we did a
lot of stuff that didn't really help then. Like putting out records
that were really limited pressing and just making stuff difficult to
find. Just dumb shit you do, I guess. And now it's cool 'cuz you got
the internet now, and the information just goes so much quicker and you
don't really have to depend so much on other people supporting you.
You can just kinda do your own thing.
Pretty much in every way
it's better. Except, you know, we're older, so it's harder to play some
of the stuff we used to play. But, you know, we figure it out.
Your
sound has been described as sludge metal, noise rock, experimental rock
and others, though on your MySpace you guys list have it as rock. Is
that an honest assessment or just an aversion to genre labels?
Yeah,
I mean we all think of it as a rock band, really. People have to label
stuff, and, that's fine. I understand why. I think we all have a
particular aversion to being called doom or stoner rock, or anything
like that. I think at this point, you know, Harvey Milk is just like
it's own thing. It can jump around.
There have been comparisons drawn between you guys and the Melvins. Any reactions to that?
I
guess any band that plays slow sometimes, you know, people are just
naturally going to say it sounds like the Melvins. Just like before the
Melvins, people would just naturally say it sounds like Black Sabbath.
So it is a little annoying to keep hearing it sounds like the Melvins,
but we're kinda used to it. We've been hearing it for 15 years.
To us it doesn't sound anything like the Melvins, but I guess there's worst things we could be compared to.
Tell us about the last record, Life...The Best Game In Town.
That
record was pretty hard to do, because we didn't have much in the way of
ideas for any songs really. And we kind of decided we were gonna do a
record, but once we got together we kinda had to dig around for ideas
and rack our brains for stuff to play. And you know, that's different
from every other record we'd done. It took a long time and a lot of it
wasn't particularly fun. But it worked out in the end.
We
started another record and it's the complete opposite of what Life was
to make. You know it's all been written and there's a clear idea of
what's going on and what's supposed to happen and that's a lot more fun
to do it that way, rather than sitting there with a guitar in your hand
trying to think of something to play.
Just the fact that we got
that record done, to me, is pretty impressive. However it turned out is
irrelevant to us. Some people really liked it, others didn't. It didn't
really matter to us, we were just glad we finished it. We're all a lot
more excited about the next one.
You'll be performing live in SoFla on Saturday. Tell me about the live show. Will there be sledgehammers and mayhem?
There
was a song where Creston would play, he would his a metal pipe with a
sledgehammer onstage. You know, you could do that in 1993 and not have
many problems with it. But we were considering it this summer and we
just realized, man, there's just no way you could do this shit anymore.
There's sparks and people would worry about you setting the stage on
fire and someone would get a spark in their face and sue you.
Besides, Creston doesn't need to be swinging a sledgehammer around anymore. You know, he's a 43-year-old man [laughs].
Okay, so no sledgehammers.
No, you know, I mean we wanted to. But times are different now.
We've
got a lot of songs under our belt now though, so it'll be a lot of fun.
We'll be able to pick from the very first song that Harvey Milk every
wrote to the last thing on our last record. You know, we've learned a
lot of shit. So it should be fun.
Harvey Milk plays Churchill's Pub (5501 NE Second Ave.) with Torche on Saturday, July 11, at midnight.
