"Athens weirdcore trio Harvey Milk is a blessedly difficult band to “know.” They frustrate category, aesthetic response, and heavy music scene politics in estimable, admirable ways. On the heels of their feedback-saturated return to recording – first the somewhat tentative Special Wishes and then 2008’s Life . . . the Best Game in Town – they return with A Small Turn of Human Kindness, an album named after the very first track on their 1996 debut.
A seven-part dirge, this album continues to refine their mixture of heavy riffage, sheer noise, and unexpected detours into introspection and delicate, emotional instrumentalism. But there’s something about the long form here that brings these elements out really vividly, freshly, in ways that suggest new discoveries and new paths taken. They remain a very patient, un-showy group, happy to let the heaviest of heavy chords – you can hear the speaker cones straining, their detuned strings flapping – simply wash over the spare shapes that make up these compositions. But what gives this music greater power and urgency is vocalist Creston Spiers’ dark dreamings.
His rattling holler is like the croaky sound that Neurosis’ Scott Kelley has recently unearthed, crossed with the phrasing of Sonic Youth’s “Marilyn Moore.” The album’s themes of lovelorn despondency might seem about as innovative as dirt, but the music breathes inspiration into them. The slow moving notes of the opening “*” – big major motifs moving in vast space and amp resonance, flirting with the anthemic – form the basic materials that are layered and layered in patient pursuit of the line. As the music emerges to form a mid-tempo crawl in “I Just Want to Go Home,” the fuzz and decay left in the wake of each crashing punctuation, each howl, create their own context beyond “heavy” signification. Things don’t so much move forward as bloom darkly, as feedback floods the pulse or as a brief staccato pattern cups a descending line (“I Am Sick of All This Too”).
It’s compelling from the start, particularly insofar as they not only avoid genre clichés but also cheap drama. Instead, they play emotionally ambiguous stuff – shifting modes and dynamics, or rather simply smashing them together until the edges are indistinct – that makes room for tart harmony (“I Know This is No Place for You”), cheeseball ‘80s keyboards (“I Know This is All My Fault”), and even some pitch-bending Southern-fried riffs on the closing “I Did Not Call Out.” None of these elements stands out or calls attention to itself; they simply emerge organically as the basic materials (not just the motif of the opener but the “I” of the titles) are continually revisited and reworked.
Singular and absorbing, Spiers chronicles his – his character’s? – beaten but not broken hope for some buried treasure from the wreck of a relationship (“In the dead gray ashes there was grace” he sings in the end). And Harvey Milk once again shake the dust from labels and produce music that’s heavy by virtues of its convictions and emotional integrity. In their music it’s easy to hear the roots of feted bands like Baroness and Kylesa, but I’m increasingly likely to think of this music – with its dark stew of minimalism, repetition, and abjection – as the blues."- Dusted
I am in complete awe of this band, and for good reason. When reference points include the Melvins, ZZ Top, and Leonard Cohen, how can you not be intrigued? This album marks Harvey Milk's return to the off kilter lumbering heaviness of their first two albums (or three, depending on how you count 'em) and is stronger throughout than either "Special Wishes" and "Life..." both of which I enjoy thoroughly. This is a legitimate contender for album of the year. Get it.
The milk of human kindness
Thanks to Lucidmedia for the link
Harvey Milk were Atlanta's answer to the Melvins, but slowed waaaaaaaay down and spaced waaaaaay out. Songs so spare but somehow so impossibly heavy, riffs so thick that they threaten to clog your speakers and rhythms so stretched out that they can barely be called rhythms. Add in a serious free jazz + ZZ Top obsession and you've got the recipe for one of the greatest, heaviest bands EVER. They recorded two brilliant full lengths (with their original lineup), one of which was re-issued on Andee's tUMULt label a couple years ago. And we thought then, sadly that we had heard the end of HM forever. But along comes Relapse to save the day, collecting all of Harvey Milk's impossibly rare 7"s and compilation tracks onto one black-hole-heavy chunk of aluminum. Most singles collections allow you to trace the development of a band, watching them slowly turn into the band you already know and love, but this collection proves that HM spontaneously combusted, emerging from their tarpit womb a fully formed, lumbering, molten, sludge rock colossus. From plodding, 3 mph sludgy, dirgey Melvins's worship, to chaotic noisy caveman thud, to Codeine-ish slow motion mood rock, to spare, rhythmic bass and drums space-scapes with demonic, anguished howls and Hendrix like riffs dipped in tar and sprinkled with wild peals of head-shearing feedback, to semi-acoustic tear jerkers, with warbly barely-in-key vocals, I mean, they even do a fucking Peter Criss solo song! How brilliant is that! Harvey Milk confounds as much as they just flat out destroy. How the fuck does a three piece rock band actually sound like they're playing on the wrong speed?! It's as if the entire band had a pitch control knob, and they keep turning it down and down and dooooown. And playing drums for this band must be utter hell. Massive expanses of space, demarcated by pounding beats, spread so far apart they just barely make up a rhythm, with enough space between beats for the drummer to get up, go to the bar, have a cigarette, and make it back in plenty of time for the next beat. So minimal and hypnotic and difficult and heavy, it just blows all other sludge rock hopefuls back to the stone age. And even in the context of a 'singles collection', songs that were never meant to be together on a record, this stuff falls so perfectly into place, you would never know this wasn't conceived as a proper record. Yet another testimony to the under-appreciated genius of the mighty Harvey Milk. Liner notes from AQ pal and Chunklet head honcho Henry Owings. Essential for those of you who love Boris, Corrupted, Earth, SUNNO))) and the like, as well as their massively head crushing opus Courtesy And Goodwill Towards Men!" 
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