Harvey Milk remain one of the most confounding metal bands in existence. The Athens, Ga. trio started out as an avant-doom band—1996’s Courtesy and Good Will Towards Men featured broken piano interludes and a tortuous cover of Leonard Cohen’s “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong.”—then, they shifted into the ZZ Top territory with The Pleaser. They broke up for a while, then reformed right as metal was becoming "cool" again, putting out two records, Special Wishes and Life...The Best Game in Town, that combined aspects of their earlier sound. Success eluded them in the '90s, but Harvey Milk earned critical respect during their second run, building a legacy of taking the piss out of themselves at every possible moment. They maintained a bleak sense of humor throughout their career: to wit, a 2010 article featured drummer Kyle Spence and bassist Stephen Tanner ripping apart their entire discography. Not much has been heard from the group in the past couple years, but Tanner has resurfaced with a solo project, Music Blues. His debut Things Haven’t Gone Well strips down the funeral blues of Harvey Milk’s last record, A Small Turn of Human Kindness. It might be too much of a reduction, though, as Tanner doesn’t exactly betray his legacy, but the record on a whole feels insufficiently fleshed out.
Most of the songs on Things follow the same structure, as Tanner’s guitar emphasizing a few riffs per song, without much else. There’s slight variations—“Trying and Giving Up” and “Great Depression” feature lurching basslines, “Hopelessness and Worthlessness” takes on a more noise-rock shape, and closer “Bonus Track” features modulated drums. “91771” (named for Tanner’s birth year) and “Premature Caesarean Removal Delivery” lead the record with big riffs and a bigger use of space, and while both are satisfying, they don't feature much more in terms of progression. There’s hints of past glories, but despite these songs' conciseness, the record can feel like a slog. Oddly, the longer songs—“It's Not Going to Get Better” and “The Price is Wrong”—aren’t as much of a chore to listen to, perhaps because they feel more developed than most of the album.
Things comes across as a collection of skeletal tracks; throughout the record, there are moments where it feels like a killer lyric from Tanner or Creston Spires, his longtime cohort in Harvey Milk, would flesh things out a little more. One endearing moment of weirdness, however, is “Teach the Children,” a slowed down snippet of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Teach the Children Well.” The folk-rock standby becomes the type of demonic of telepathy that got TV pastors and parents riled up in the '80s, with the same evil haziness that permeated DJ Screw’s finest mixes. Things could use more of the unique personality contained in "Teach the Children", and while it’s nice to see that someone from Harvey Milk is still actively making music, it's hard to accept Things as Tanner’s true return.
