Milton Star - Things Fall Apart

by John Clarkson

published: 19 / 6 / 2015

Label: Stereogram Recordings
Format: Download

Extraordinary download only second single from dark Fife-based duo, Milton Star

Review

Milton Star capture that moment with their beautiful but bleak second single 'Things Fall Apart' when the world comes crashing in, when something so devastating happens that one feels that one is going to be permanently crushed by it. The group, a duo consisting of Alan Wylie and Graeme Currie, who were both in 1970's post punk band Thursdays, first formed in 2010, and have spent the last five years preparing and recording material in Wylie's home studio in a converted church in rural Fife. Their debut album will come out on the excellent Edinburgh-based label Stereogram Recordings in October. 'Things Fall Apart' on the surface has an epic, widescreen sound. Slow-paced and sultry, it in fact makes a lot out of a little, each note from its small collection of instruments - a shimmering steel guitar, a swirling keyboard, the occasional crash of drums and in its final moments a beeezy harmonica - counting for a great deal. Wylie's lyrics, a mere eight lines in length, are also kept deliberately sparse and obtuse. One is never sure exactly what he is singing about, whether it is a death, the end of a love affair or something else entirely. When he sings, however, with his rich, baritone vocals the opening lines of "When my melancholy mind lies broken/When everything turns dark/When loneliness is my compadre/And when there is nowhere left to hide," he speaks for most of us at some point in our lives. 'Things Fall Apart' is extraordinarily powerful. Melancholic and despairing at one level, it also proves at another redemptive. For this reviewer, there is unlikely to be a better single this year.