Issue 3: Get a load of these puppies

Hello pals!

It’s getting dark at 8pm again, and the rain is getting relentless, so I guess that means summer’s over. Fun while it lasted. But if you’re looking for something to tide you over in the two months before Halloween, you’re in luck - we’re going on a gosh-dang tour!

We’re getting in the Milk Wagon

Tour’s a-coming! And so are a boatload of new songs. We’re excited. You’re excited. Please come see us play or it’s just a long family holiday in the rain. 

Tour dates:

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

• 27 Sept LONDON - The Cavendish Arms for Get In Her Ears’ 10th birthday  (SOLD OUT BUT JOIN THE WAIT LIST!)

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

• 3 October NEWCASTLE - The Cumberland Arms with Lande Hekt

• 4 October EDINBURGH INDIEPOP ALL DAYER (SOLD OUT) 

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

• 10 October LONDON - The Ivy House, supporting Perennial

GET A LOAD OF THESE PUPPIES

It’s new merch!! Designed by Healey, this gorgeous two-colour tee features two pups in the rain and the line ‘The good boy in the mirror is you’ which is a lyric from Canines. We’ll be taking these tees on tour with us next month, but you can order one now for Bandcamp Friday (where Bandcamp gives 100% of the money to artists without taking a cut). 

I’m a good boy, let me buy a t-shirt

Boring shit news about GPSR

A few of you might be aware that new Brexit customs regulations came into force in December last year. GPSR (General Product Safety Regulations) now prohibits us from sending any new physical merchandise to the EU (and the tariffs, miserably, have done the same for the US). There’s more info here if you can be arsed reading it.

This means that unfortunately for the foreseeable future we can ONLY send merch to places within the UK. It’s heartbreaking but please don’t buy our physical merch if you’re overseas as we’ll just have to refund it. We’ll think of a digital way to make it up to you, we promise!

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

Lily: I recently read Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson which was great and tough and really funny, and now I’m veeeeery slowly reading The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo. It’s good! It’s just another All-American Family Examines Love and Grief in Hidden Secrets that Span Generations and there’s only so many of those you can take, which admittedly is on me. I also bought a book about ghosts for £1 recently. 

I recently got invited to chat about music with Mari of Get In Her Ears on Soho Radio which was really fun and introduced me to a ton of bands I didn’t know! So I’m really loving Cowboy Hunters, The None and Wench! (whose album is called ‘Relaxing Rain Sounds for Baby Sleep’) at the moment. (Incidentally you can listen to us shooting the shit and playing songs here). I also got the unbelievable privilege of joining the Ctrl+P Community Choir for the incoming Tugboat Captain album which is going to blow your face clean off your head. I’m so so so excited for it.

I went to see The Fantastic Four by myself so there’s that. 

Alex: I can't lie, there's a non-zero chance my favourite song of the year is 25 minutes long. Thanks for the concision, The Necks. Also shoutout to the gorgeous Shabason, Krgovich & Tenniscoats album - surely the only semi-improvised folk record you’ll hear this year that quotes Madonna before covering MBV. // If our cheeky little song about space fascism was how it started back in 2020, astrophysicist Adam Becker's More Everything Forever seems to suggest that, five years on, however shitty things get here, it’ll be exponentially worse when we attempt to colonise a red planet where the dirt is poisonous. // If anyone's seen Eddington and fancies getting into a, uh, heated discussion about it, hit me up. It’s been a fortnight and I’m still thinking about it.

Healey: Welcome to another addition of ‘Healey’s books for benders’.  I just finished Pulp by Robin Talley a really great queer YA novel that I’d avoided for a while because the cover is just so so bad! Idioms be damned, I will judge your book by its cover!! Do better publishers! It’s all about lesbian pulp novels from the 50’s so this is the kind of cover they could have had:

I’ve been spinning Freezing Cold - Treasure Pool a bunch this month. Catchy harmonies, fuzzy guitars and one of my favourite DIY scene drummers Angie Boylan (Cheeky, Aye Nako & Sleater-Kinney!!! after Janet bounced). I doubt they will ever make it over to the UK but I will be dragging everyone to see them if they ever do cross the pond.

I also just finished watching Long Story Short from the makers of BoJack Horsman. I love Lisa Hanawalt’s art so much and she doesn’t get enough credit for how she’s shaped modern adult animation. It’s beautiful, really moving and just stupidly funny.

Nick: I went to Arctangent Festival! What a nice festival without a single dickhead in attendance (usually means the dickhead was me) . Loads of great bands, but exceptional shifts put in by Slift, Mclusky, Love Rarely and The Callous Daoboys, whose album might be my fave this year.

In terms of reading, my good friend Ben Pester just released his exceptional first novel, The Expansion Project. Buy it! Now! I’ve been watching Alien: Earth which, some plot armour aside, is great fun.

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

• Sunday 7 September - Decolonise Fest Day 2 at Signature Brew Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow

• Saturday 13 September- Fortitude Valley, adults, Lanny at New River Studios, Harringay

• Friday 26 September- Sassyhiya, The Slugs, The Burgers at The Cavendish Arms, Stockwell

• Saturday 27 September - this fucking STACKED line up including us, also at the Cav. It’s a waitlist but join it anyway! You never know!

Also, our amazing friends flinch. are taking their music off Spotify. They’re legends. You can see them on 27 September supporting the fantastic Fortitude Valley in Manchester.

It absolutely blows that DIY bands and artists are the ones making these decisions but as it’s bandcamp Friday go and download everything your favourite little band has ever done. I think more and more bands will be abandoning Spotify very soon so now’s the time! xx