limited to 500. recorded in a single day, ‘heart and soul…’ consists of 15 more songs from the pop / punk chocolate assortment box which the band have raided for so many years: love songs, silly songs, songs about obsolete items of stationary and such like, all set to a basic guitar buzz and kick drum combo. the album bristles with spontaneous excitement due to the success of the live recording with no overdubs, giving heart and soul in the milky way a much rawer, yet fresher feel than their previous albums, with the likes of “worthless person” veering towards billy childish garage rock territory. milky wimpshake have produced the strongest set of songs of their career from the subterranean homesick opener ‘chemical spray’, with its arbitrary rhymes and taking-the-piss guitar break, the innuendo-laden ‘on top’, full of maudlin indie-pop melodicism and the closing duet ‘without you’ which covers the same theme as six million other songs and yet still manages to raise a smile. while the majority of the album features compositions by frontman pete dale (also head of the legendary indie label slampt), there are two covers, including a punked-up version of ‘lah-di-dah’, a song by jake thackray, a singer-songwriter who had some success in the 1960s and 70s with often-lewd lyrics which he used to croon with wonderfully tired eyes.
