Issue 2: New songs and bouncy floors

Dear milky mates,

Lily here. Well done on surviving the bastard heatwave, especially if you’re on SSRIs and your eyeballs felt like they were melting the whole time. I went to Lidl a LOT for the air-con. We've now been blessed with the kind of rain where you can put on really miserable songs and sit next to a bus window staring into the past. Hell yeah.

To business!

Gigs, new songs, and murder ballads

I got possessed by a demon one evening and recorded three cursed folk songs for you to download for free.

There’s a murder ballad, a song about hares on a mountain which is in no way a metaphor for horny teenagers, and one about just lying down in a cemetery and refusing to get up.

In actual Fightmilk news, we’ve had our first new songs writing session since before we put out No Souvenirs. There are SIX new songs that we’re trying to wrangle. I went mildly nuts sending the others about 50 demos of half-ideas over the last few months and it shows. Healey, Alex and Nick are being very patient and nice about the fact that a lot of them seem to make no sense musically. We’re keeping it all quiet until it’s ready, but you can have a song title to tide you over. Hope you’re ready for Sounds Like A You Problem… if you’re not, well, that sounds like a you problem.

Tour dates

• 26 Sept BRIGHTON - The Hope and Ruin with Problem Patterns 

• SOLD OUT! 27 Sept LONDON - The Cavendish Arms for Get In Her Ears’ 10th birthday

• 2 October BIRMINGHAM - The Rock and Roll Brewhouse with Wiiince

• 3 October NEWCASTLE - The Cumberland Arms with Lande Hekt (Ticket link coming)

• SOLD OUT! 4 October EDINBURGH - Edinburgh Indiepop All-Dayer

• 5 October LEEDS - Wharf Chambers with efemel and We Are The Weirdos

• 10 October LONDON - The Ivy House, supporting Perennial

Fightmilk enjoy culture: stuff we’ve been listening to, reading, and watching

Lily: All I’ve been listening to recently is the new flinch. album, misery olympian. Half of Fightmilk recently went up to Glasgow to see Japanese Breakfast at the Barrowlands (and get a tour of the Necropolis with Slime City) and were lucky enough to catch flinch.’s album launch too. Incidentally, I think the Barrowlands is my new favourite music venue - the floor is bouncy, you can see everything wherever you stand, and I had four pints of Tennents. We also saw Press Club at their one London show at the New Cross Inn, which was really good despite being in the New Cross Inn.

Our mates in Problem Patterns put out a fucking banger of a single which I’ve played to death.

I’ve been watching a lot of the Women’s Euros and wishing I was best friends with Lucy Bronze. I’m thinking about autumn (I can’t deal with summer in London) and finally treated myself to a Shudder subscription so I can fake getting cosy by watching Blood on Satan’s Claw and Witchfinder General, and reading the (so far really good) Pine by Francine Toon.

Alex: Five words I've enjoyed hearing since the last newsletter: “Brighton” // "playlist" // "sportswear" // "yourchhhhself" // [gasp]

Healey: My current addiction is listening to Gelli Haha's new album ‘Switcheroo’. It's wonderful freak pop, like Kate Bush on LSD meets Italo Disco and there’s a song about pissing in a jar. A great album to fill the void till we get any new Chappell Roan.

I also went and saw Stereophonic at the Duke of York Theatre the other week and it was far too long but I also wanted to watch another 3 hours of it. It’s about a fictional rock band (that couldn’t possibly be Fleetwood Mac wink wink) on the cusp of superstardom as they struggle through recording their new album. You're basically a fly on the wall watching all the dumb creative clashes and everything is super realistic right down to the 30 min argument about the drummer using a click track. The songs SLAP and it made me want to rip off my skin in frustration but also get straight back into the studio. 10/10 better than therapy.

Nick: I've come down with a huge case of Cup Fever I'm afraid so been watching as much of the Women's Euros as possible. We, the band Fightmilk, all went to see Friendship together and it was absurd nonsense that's well worth your time. I'm 20 days off of going to Arctangent Festival so still filling my ears with people playing that. They usually have names like GARK!, CROG, THORSKG… that kind of thing. Hope you're all excited for my in depth review of everything I saw/ate/drank in the next newsletter.

Other bands/gigs we're excited to go and see

July 26th YES TOMORROW! There’s an absolutely stacked lineup of big fat riffs happening at Walthamstow Trades Hall for London Trans Pride, feat The Oozes, Jemma Freeman and the Cosmic Something, Breakup Haircut, and The Dead Zoo.

August 23rd at Signature Brew on Blackhorse Road, pink suits are hosting another amazing Queer Cxntry event, which is a big gay old day full of queer country bands, line dancing, and food and drink. It’s worth going anyway to see pink suits absolutely smash shit up but rumours are circulating that the Dumb Blondes, a Dolly Parton tribute supergroup made up of all your favourite DIY heroes, will be performing…

August 25 at the Dome, our dear mates in Brutalligators and Soot Sprite are playing with Chase Petra. Soot Sprite’s new album, Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon, is absolutely fucking phenomenal and on constant rotation at ours. Brutalligators also just don’t miss and I’ve not seen them live in ages. They play DIY venues like they’re huge arenas and I love them.

AND FINALLY

Sounds like a you problem:

Last newsletter we invited you to write to us anonymously using NGL on instagram with any woes or troubles we could try and help you solve. (It turns out that you can’t log back into NGL once you’ve got a new phone so that’s a bust.)

But we did receive a question around string etiquette. I’m paraphrasing here but it was along the lines of:

“Dear Fightmilk,

My bandmates keep asking me to change guitar strings, saying it’ll sound nicer. However, I hate changing strings and I like the way they sound when they’re a bit worn in. Can I ignore them and keep my old strings on? How long is too long to go without changing strings?”

Dear reader,

How long is a piece of string? And how long is too long to keep old strings on a guitar? I absolutely despise changing guitar strings but because of a lack of skill and patience I’m constantly having to change the top three (I mainly play power chords that have been strung very badly).

I don’t think anyone can argue with the objective fact that new strings sound nicer. However they keep going out of tune for a few days after you change them which means it’s a TERRIBLE IDEA to change them anywhere near a gig.

I think a fair compromise is to change them two weeks or so before you go on tour. You can probably get eight or nine gigs out of one set of strings? That said, I avoid changing strings whenever I can. So unless these bandmates are going to change your strings FOR YOU, do what you want. Are you going to tune your drummer’s snare? No you are not.

Got a quandary? Stuck with a thinker? Need entirely unprofessional advice from a DIY pop band? We’re excited to have a go at Sounds Like a You Problem, our agony aunt section of the newsletter. Simply drop us an email and we will do our best to solve your problem in the next newsletter.

The Small Print: Obviously please don’t send us any really bad problems because absolutely none of the four members of Fightmilk are qualified in any way, shape or form to give you medical, financial or legal advice etc. We don’t want another Incident.