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London quartet Fightmilk offer up a joyful racket on their second LP, Contender
Fightmilk’s second album
Contender proves itself worthy of the title. If you like catchy indierock/pop with lyrics that can cut down the best of them but just as easily abandon that tone for the heartfelt, and even profound, then Fightmilk are the band for you. Their 2018 debut,
Not With That Attitude, was a winning combination of bile, big hooks, and a great sense of humor and, although they didn’t need to, the band has expanded their palette on
Contender and it’s paid off handsomely. Lily Rae’s voice, already powerful, has become much more expressive as well, adding subtle inflections to strong lyrical lines and making these that much richer. The shout is still there, mind you, most evident in ‘Cool Cool Girl’ whose middle-eight list beginning “I’m a poet, I’m a DJ, I’m an artist, I’m amazing” gets right to the point, showing up the shallow ambitions of the titular type.
Fightmilk - Contender | Reviews diymag.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from diymag.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Words: Jake Richardson
Contender, the second LP from South Londoners Fightmilk, encapsulates many different punk-leaning sounds. Indie, pop-punk and alt.pop all rear their head across this album’s 14 tracks, but these somewhat disparate sounds are tied together by the band’s inescapable ear for melody, and a charming sense of whimsy that compliments the emotional core of the songs.
Vocalist/guitarist Lily Rae shines throughout, displaying a heartfelt yet hard-hitting demeanour, with the relatable and forthright lyrics of tracks like Lucky Coin – ‘
We wake up every morning and we pray the end is quick / The world is just one big dark room that makes you feel sick’ – proving one of this record’s greatest strengths. Another real asset of Fightmilk is their appetite for hooky, melody-driven choruses, such as those on Overbite, which features charmingly straightforward lyricism (‘