I don't know why, but I had in my mind that the Milltown Brothers were from Ireland; they're not of course, they're from a little town in Lancashire called Colne - which I discovered as soon as I opened up Wikipedia.
And do you know what only just occurred to me? The band are called the Milltown Brothers; we know that. We also know that the band contains two brothers, Matt and Simon Nelson, so far, so Columbo. But, hang on, Colne is a Lancashire mill town. So, hold your horses here... You mean they're brothers, from a mill town? Christ I must be thick, it's taken me the best part of 20 years to work that out...
I shan't bore you with all the details of the bands history, that's well documented on their myspace page, which is well worth a visit. But suffice to say that the band can be added to the long list of "indie bands that were far better than you remember and should have been far bigger than they were, if only the record company had spent some money and nobody had invented Nirvana".
The Milltown Brothers are, almost inevitably, still pottering along; they released a new album in 2004, but for a perfect slice of 1991 indie pop, have this here mp3: Milltown Brothers - Which Way Should I Jump?, it's got the standard "ding-ding-ding-dinga-dinga-ding-ding" jingly-jangly indie guitar riff in it, so that rates an 8/10 on the Carter Scale of indieness and frankly, dear reader, that's all you need to know. Get the fringe flicking and have a dance round the lounge. You won't regret it.
Thursday 9 August 2007
Milltown Brothers
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I have this single too. Their cover of It's all over now baby blue is excellent.
ReplyDeleteI got a Milltown Brothers single on a free cassette from Select(?) and Sally-Ann made this shoe-gazer almost weep.
ReplyDeleteAlbum version isn't as good.
saw them at my first ever gig, in the inappropriately-named Caesar's Palace in Aberdeen. They played Which Way Should I Jump, twice.
ReplyDeleteI played in a band called the Big Name Hunters.. We supported the Milltown Bros at a college in Bournemouth once. We played happy guitar pop which was all the rage and these guys came on with Hammond Organs and anoraks. "That'll never last" I though just as the Manchester scene exploded all over the country. I seem to remember they were quite good. Ade.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course "Here I Stand" was the theme to the excellent "All Quiet on the Preston Front"
ReplyDeleteAs per Duncan, this was the EXACT same gig I lost my gig cherry at too. Hang on, do I know you?
ReplyDeleteSeem to remember them introducing every song the played with "This is our favourite song".
Support was an unsigned (I think) band from Colne too. Think they were called "Beware The Green Monkey" or suchlike, I bought a tape, it was pretty good.
I ended up being a huge MB fan and bought every 12" they released... And then they released Valve. Still got them all somewhere.
My band"TheUnit"supported the Milltown's several times in the Lancashire area along with other local bands such as"Hate syndicate" and"Green monkey".They stand today as one of this country's finest bands,even though they were mis-managed,their sound is still strong as the day they recorded it! "slinky" is simply one of the greatest indie albums of all time,i may be slightly biased but listening again to their excellent songs makes you realise why so many people miss them. I do!!!
ReplyDeleteThey played this on Blue Peter. You don't get less cool than that.
ReplyDelete