Search - Harvey Milk :: Courtesy & Goodwill Toward Men (Bonus CD)

Truly transcendental

animate ~ | Fayetteville, NC | 12/02/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In this day and age, with bands claiming themselves "emo" (short for emotional), it's hard to think clearly about what it truely means to be emotionally honest. If I had to decide on one record, this one would qualify as the most emotionally charged I could ever think of.



Firstly, I'm very happy that Relapse released this. Now it's not only easier to pick up a legit copy, but all those who debated the 'heaviness' will now have nothing to gawk at--Harvey Milk is undeniably metal, and heavier than a lot of music that is labeled with five dollar words as being "crushingly heavy".



And I'm not discounting Aquarius records at all! This album really is "heartbreakingly heavy"--so much so that this feels like an understatement. The album cover alone conveys so much strain as to make one wonder what is actually going to be heard when you listen. And a huge listen it is! By covering so many tones--poetic minimalist acoustic pieces, sludge laden doom metal (to name just two)--the band may have actually outdone themselvs in some places.



Not that I find fault at ANY point during any of the tracks, but this album is undeniably hard to understand to someone not familar with their sound. Guitars fuzz and drone out for ten minutes at a time, then being broken with silent guitar chords, and then being turned up once again, this time with an added wail of grief.



That is another matter to discuss--the vocals. I love them, through and through, but Creston Spiers vocals are thee definition of what you'd attribute the sound of "heart on your sleeve" mentality. He wails with pain at times; at others, he whispers, barley audible; he even prays ("The Lords Prayer"). He's also willing to step back and let the band create a sound that is as demanding of your patience as it is beautiful to hear each time you play it ("Pinnochio's Example", "My Broken Heart Will Never Mend").



I've read that this album, along with their first release, was giving mixed reactions when it was released just as it is today. Thankfully, we can now see that it has stood the test of time and indeed seems to be strengthened by it. This album is beautiful, frightening, emotional, heavy, and--yep, they're right--heartbreaking. More than anything, though, it's truthful; a true testament to the value of emotional creativity and what it is to be honest with oneself."

Quite possibly, the greatest, heaviest, weirdest, saddest, m

Aquarius Records | San Francisco | 09/17/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"We love doom sludge dirgelords Harvey Milk. That should be painfully self evident by now. So you can imagine how thrilled we've been with the recent spate of HM action. A brand new record!! A mind blowing DVD documentary and this, a deluxe reissue of perhaps Harvey Milk's finest moment, an all time doom dirge slowcore sludge classic, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men. Until recently, Courtesy was available on the tUMULt label, in a super swank, hand assembled, die cut, letter pressed sleeve, designed to replicate the original vinyl release. But as the supply of those dwindled, and interest in the Milk began to soar, Relapse leapt into the fray and offered to re-issue it with a bonus disc!



So here we have it. The packaging, while maybe not as cool as the handmade version, is still quite striking, but the real attraction here is the addition of a bonus disc, Live At TT The Bears, a previously cd-r only release, long out of print, that features HM at their Courtesy prime, completely laying waste, proving they could create the same malevolent beauty live, in front of a crowd that sounds like it couldn't number more than 20 people. But oh how we envy those lucky souls. So basically, if you're new to Harvey Milk, but are a fan of any sort of slow, heaviness, that for the love of all that is unholy, pick this up, it is your new favorite record. And if you already have a copy, well, if you're as obsessed with HM as we are, you'll just have to buy it again. The bonus disc is SO worth it. Here's us gushing about Courtesy way back when the tUMULt version first came out:



Crushing and pummeling majestic beauty, interspersed with delicate moments of hushed whispery strum. Lumbering downtuned hyper-rhythmic skull crack dropped delicately into suffocating expanses of near silence. Delicate pointillist piano mutates into a dirgey exercise in tension that sounds like a lost Dario Argento soundtrack performed by the Melvins. Lilting and melancholy near-ballads are disrupted by incessant and brutally heavy riffs. Amidst the pummel and beneath the negative space swirls a barely audible maelstrom of whispered vocals, warbling turntables and whirring vacuum cleaners, all adding to the confusional brilliance that is Harvey Milk. And their heart wrenching cover of Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" features what has to be the most tortured and anguished vocal performance ever recorded.



Too heavy to be post rock. Too weird to be metal. Too everything to be anything, Harvey Milk are unconventional and wholly unique, both structurally and sonically, touching on territory mined by the likes of Gastr Del Sol, Codeine, Queen, Husker Du, Man Is The Bastard, the Melvins, and ZZ Top, but slowing it down, making it HEAVY, and f-cking it up. Making it more beautiful, while making it difficult to listen to at all.



Hypnotic, repetitive and jarring. Unpredictable, exhausting and perplexing.



And although we do get carried away now and again, and declare certain records best ever, and weirdest ever, without any trace of hyperbole or irony, we can unequivocally proclaim that Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men is quite possibly, the greatest, heaviest, weirdest, saddest, most beautiful record ever made. Seriously."

The Best Non-Melvins Sludge/Doom Album

Max Coombes | Auckland | 10/26/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The title says it all. I can hardly articulate my love for this album here. Combine everything good about Public Castration era Swans with Soundtracks For the Blind era Swans, KISS, Bela Bartok, Leonard Cohen and of course the Melvins and you have intensely depressing, highly literate sludge/doom existing in a world of its own (under an atmosphere of dodgy production ticks and hisses)



Singer-songwriter doom metal, that is, it wants you to drink whiskey with a broken heart and think about dying rather than light one up like every other sludge/doom band out there. Even the ultra-depressing guys from Eyehategod jam some danceable doom/blues, Harvey Milk just stab themselves in front of you.



Dear god, just buy it."