Album Review: MC16 – We’re Gonna Need a Milkman

Album Review: MC16 – We’re Gonna Need a Milkman

Reviewed by Dan Barnes

Our good friends, MC16, popped out their second album, We’re Gonna Need a Milkman, at the end of August, a mere eighteen months after debut, Machine Code, hit the racks. This sophomore release sees the punk trio picking up where Machine Code ended, with the band sharpening their trenchant and insightful views of modernity against a now-fifty-year-old musical genre.

Running at about twenty-seven minutes, MC16 spend the first eleven-and-a-half – or the record’s first five tracks – warming the listener up with some classic MC16 tunes and caustic observations. Standard Class acts like a sibling to No Blood No Guilt’s United States of Generica, only this time the homogenised town centres are replaced by artists and dreamers, who yearn to push the boundaries, only for their creativity to be sacrificed on the altars of commercialism. The rhythm section of bassist Quinn and drummer, Duffy, lay a solid platform upon which guitarist/ vocalist, Carson, can spit raw proclamations, conjuring those old-school punk vibes of yester-year.

Cheerful addresses the idea of mental health and depression in particular, a jolly drum pattern reflecting the less-than-useless advice to cheer up or, in the context of this song, to pull your socks up. The band turn up the Oi! feel to this and to great effect. Addiction and substance abuse are the subject under Trooper’s discussion, arriving with a fat, stomping progression and crunching guitars; the alternative-sounding mid-section plays on the idea of becoming a Jekyll and Hyde character while under the influence, and the dangers of what happens when it takes hold.

The theme of mental health rear its head on Help Deak, through stabbing guitars and a snotty punk attitude, and Rubble Walker takes the earliest sound of the punk genre and paints a picture of its protagonist making their way through war ravaged streets.

At this point we’re five songs in and it feels like there’s been barely time to breathe. The reggae rhythms of Last Card arrive like a cold water shock, the easy, laid-back grooves acting like a complete one-hundred-and-eighty turn following the rampant opening to We’re Gonna Need a Milkman; I think Carson may have made a rod for his own back with Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, its tongue-twister title is going to be a nightmare to deliver live, but the Stiff Little Finger’s adjacent riff and classic punk working class ire probably means it’s something he’s going to have to get used to.

The only song on the record to break the three-minute mark is the album highlight, Descended from Our Victims, from the heavy opening and pumping rhythms to the classic sixties-era pre-chorus, it’s driving and dangerous, introducing ideas of environmental responsibility in the most ambitious of …Milkman’s dozen. That’s Progress clocks in at less than a minute, arriving with the kind of Rock & Roll vibes you’d expect from Elvis; if The King had ever decided to try his hand at punk, that is.

The environment is considered again on Mars, a savage attack on the consumerist model that has strip-mined the Earth and is ready to do the same to the Red Planet; blending aggressive classic punk with a more poppy version, this is sure to become another live favourite. My Mind is Obsolete comes in with fuzzy bass and a rambunctious rhythm, and closing tune, End on a High, is part torch-song confessional and part upbeat, bouncing So Cal anthem.

We’re Gonna Need a Milkman is short but it’s an absolute blast of an album. It embodies the spirit of punk by three fellas who are probably old enough to know better but just don’t care. What’s more punk rock that that?

And I bet you’re wondering about that title? Well, funny you should ask… when humans do eventually colonise Mars, and houses are built, there’s going to have to be some way to get fresh milk on your cereals and in your tea. Urban planners will have come up with a fantastic solution: We’re Gonna Need a Milkman!

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