‘Vile Child’ is Milk Teeth. Capturing the tension and chemistry of all four members before roughly grabbing a loose thread of influences and running with it, their lightening in a bottle debut is the perfect snapshot of who the band are.
From the opening roar of ‘Brickwork’, through the swaggering growl of ‘Burger Drop’ to ‘Leona’, all rugged expression, harrowing soar and beyond, ‘Vile Child’ is consistently yet astonishingly great.
The quirky sidesteps and stolen glances that defined the band’s earlier work as something special are still present but Milk Teeth have learnt how to deploy them with devastating accuracy. They’ve also got nastier.
Building on the foundations of ‘Sad Sack’, ‘Vile Child’ is bigger, rougher and more ambitious. ‘Brain Food’ is a stuttering yet relentless nailgun of a track while the spat frustration of ‘Get A Clue’ sees the band at their most terrifying. Even a rerecorded ‘Swear Jar (again)’ now dances under the band’s big ideas.
