Harvey Milk, ‘A Small Turn of Human Kindness’ — New Album

This has been one worth the wait. The Athens, Ga. noise/blues trio Harvey Milk have announced that their new record, 'A Small Turn of Human Kindness,' will hit shelves on May 18. The faithful will recognize this title as the name of an instrumental track from the band's long praised 'My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be,' and though that song makes no appearance on this seven-song powerhouse album, bassist Stephen Tanner told Noisecreep that was not the original title of the album; it was 'Music Blues.'

"That was the title for the longest time. It was a title I came up with which basically means music sucks. It's blues so things are bad, or whatever," a belch escaped through the phone lines. "But lyrically Creston [Spiers] came up with something altogether different, so the title changed less than a month ago when he was doing the vocals."

Harvey Milk have spent quite the time on a record that has already being explained as orchestrated in construction. "Our drummer has a recording studio so I'll come down from [New York] and we'll put it together and then just kind of sit on it for a while because Creston's a school teacher so we try to do things around summer break and spring break." When Tanner gave us some details in December, he was listening to the final mixes, but basic tracking was already finished before the band hit the road back in July on a co-headlining tour with Torche.

Tanner describes the album as a story. "Which is silly," he laughed after pausing for a moment. "I mean the story isn't silly, but I don't know how to pitch it. You can call it a f---ing musical for all I know. "

Whatever this is, or whatever it turns out to be labeled as in their ever-unique canon, Harvey Milk people are ready, as they are ready for some kind of over-the-top vinyl packaging we are all sure Hydra Head Records will put together for this.