Harvey Milk

The band Harvey Milk didn’t need a second chance to produce a legendary discography. No, the Athens, Ga., bros did that the first time around, making two of the South’s weirdest, best rock records with 1994’s left-field My Love is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be and 1995’s tension-obsessed Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men. Lucky for us with ears and the desire to hear heavy music done differently, Harvey Milk returned to being a rock band in 2006 after nearly a decade-long hiatus. They rode a string of compilations and reissues into a record deal with Los Angeles bastion Hydra Head, and since 2006, they’ve again made two of the South’s weirdest, best rock records—2008’s Life…The Best Game in Town and the forthcoming A Small Turn of Human Kindness.

Any effort to classify Harvey Milk’s music is as frustrating as any attempt to predict it: They’ve covered Fear and Leonard Cohen, lyrically referenced fairy tales and The Velvet Underground, and mixed electric guitar blasts with acoustic guitar creepers. They’re too limber and inclusive to be a heavy metal band (or even to accept that tag), but despite the indefatigable hooks of songs like “Motown” and the party-city swill of 1997’s The Pleaser, they’re much too brusque and brutal to be considered just another rock ’n’ roll band. After the triumph of 2008’s song-centric Life…The Best Game in Town, which introduced Harvey Milk to a fleet of listeners, the eternal apostates returned with an album that moves from riff to riff for A Small Turn of Human Kindness. Of course, for its nearly 40 minutes, it doesn’t pause once to survey the damage its thick riffs, rhythmic shocks and Creston Spiers’ bone-dry howl have caused. If “Motown” was Harvey Milk’s “hit,” their latest work is the hit’s dismissal.

Long live this malevolent resurrection. —Grayson Currin