As announced Relapse Records is re-issuing the now cult albums by Harvey Milk. I already reviewed the previous re-release of the album My Love Is Higher Than What Your Assessment Of My Love Could Be,  and now The Pleaser lies before me, enhanced with a live-on-the-radio album.

This disc is so utterly different from the other one I reviewed, very weird to hear them in this way. While on My Love Is Higher… a noisy post-everything band is displayed, this record is made out of so-called Big Rock Songs. They have mixed their twisted music with the more common seventies rock like Thin Lizzy, Kiss, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top. This results in a band in which at first listen I didn’t even recognize Harvey Milk.

 

A couple of more closer listening sessions proved that it was still Harvey Milk at work here. The haunted vocals, the unique drum patterns, devastating rock riffs and melancholic melodies. But still, as the previous album I was confronted with made me scratch my head all too often, this one just flows by quite easily. Perhaps too easily even. That’s why it is mandatory to listen to this album many times, to really hear what they’re doing. This stuff rocks monstrously, in a unique way.

 

The extra album, dubbed Live Pleaser, has an entire live on the radio performance of this record, including a cover of Kiss’ track ‘Deuce’. It’s pretty funny to hear them talk in between the songs, while you hear no crowd at all. Must be weird doing a radio concert I guess. Anyway, it’s a nice addition for the fans of Harvey Milk, especially the ones that have never seen the band perform.

 

So there you have it, another re-release of a cult rock band. Fans of rock music with a kind of Melvins twist should definitely pick this up.