Raised on Red Milk is the first full-length contribution to the world of off-beat, country-infused punk ruled by Frank Lloyd Wleft. Having trekked through jangle pop, beat poetry and country, Wleft has gathered all he can and concocted an idiosyncratic and raw sound. The songs can meander and shift, but are rooted by a pop sensibility and twang that lends a familiar edge.
Alongside his Orchestra, Wleft has been building a world of personal lore, pitting freewheeling Americana against real-world ruminations. Acting as a vessel through which to distill this myriad of influences, the straightforward musical tropes of the West allow Wleft to form and contain some disparate ideas. As he himself puts it: “The Rebel speaks about country music as part of a funnel that takes all the bizarre ideas in his mind and filters them into workable songs; I’d say my experience is broadly similar to that.”
Wax Music attended the album’s recent launch show, where Wleft and his Orchestra were joined by Nina Winder-Lind, Medb and poets from Gobjaw Poetry Collective for the inauguration of Raised on Red Milk. To try an unpack it all, we spoke to the man himself about his time at university, London’s poetry circuit, and how to channel one’s ideas.
Congratulations on the recent launch show, how did it feel to officially mark the album’s release?
October was really lovely as a way of completing our work on the project, sending it out into the world. It feels great to finally have a body of work to stand behind (up until this point all I had was couple of singles and a ramshackle homemade country Christmas album) and we have proudly developed some very stupid bits of lore around it.
On that note, securing the appearance on stage of the ‘Red Milk Dog’ (aka Nikolai Fedorov Jr.) at the Windmill launch was a huge win. We look forward to him joining us for future shows.
It was also just a lovely moment to celebrate the album with friends, made all the better by performances from artists with a kinship with the project: Medb, who designed the cover; Nina Winder-Lind whose musical obsessions cross heavily with my own; and a series of poets from the Gobjaw Poetry Collective, whose work I love and whose existence vindicated the inclusion of a spoken poem on the record.
What is the motive behind the title Raised on Red Milk? Does it simply describe skimmed milk during childhood or is there something else there?
Literally, yes – I was ‘raised on red milk,’ but its reason for sticking as the title goes a little beyond that. I put it down as the title of the demos that eventually became songs for the album and lots of people seemed to pick up on it. The producer Alfie Whillis said it felt like a potent phrase, like it had some latent power. So it stuck from there.
It feels appropriate to use a phrase that suggested a connection to my childhood on a debut album. In developing this album, I wanted to lean into the idea of it being a debut. We were minimal with overdubs, keeping mostly to the band’s raw three-piece sound. There are also songs there that I wrote when I was much younger and ones that possess a degree of naivety. I like that baby fat and I like leaving room to grow the sound having worked things out in the barebones style. Talking Heads’ ’77 was a strong reference point in that respect.
Can you introduce the dog accompanying you at the show and on the cover and explain their significance to Frank Lloyd Wleft?
Nikolai Fedorov Jr., recently christened, named after the father of Russian Cosmism; a fantastic philosophy that insists on the inevitability that science will “cure death” and develop resurrection, twinned with the belief that it is man’s historical destiny to colonise space (where else would we put those resurrected folks?).
Nikki lived in my Grandma’s house, where we shot the album cover, largely drawn to the carpet in the dining room. Medb and I were fretting looking for whimsies or other such objects to complete the set and not finding anything in charity shops. Then we got to the house and I was like, “oh hang on – why was I worrying? Grandma’s got loads of amazing objects lying about the house.” The dog made a perfect fit for our set.
When Grandma moved house, Nikki ended up at my Auntie’s. When she heard I was looking for my own to take on stage, she fiercely insisted we take it, so here it is for every show hence.
Although perhaps tongue-in-cheek, your term ‘post-Americana’ works well as a descriptor of the music – how did you come to write an album masquerading as a country band?
Labelling genres is always a bit silly, but you do need something to explain your sound. Usually, I’m more helpful and describe our music as a mix of country and punk, but leaning into the silliness of post-post-modern genres, I call ours ‘post-Americana.’ The Rebel speaks about country music as part of a funnel that takes all the bizarre ideas in his mind and filters them into workable songs; I’d say my experience is broadly similar to that.
Country explains how music works, with meaningful lyrics imbued with their maximum emotional potential by melodic details. It’s a good discipline to apply yourself too, rather than just giving yourself something loud and fast to yelp over the top of (not that we’re completely averse to a bit of yelping).
The midpoint transition into the poetry of ‘The Gilesgate Monologues’ brings some strong meditation on topics such as life during university. How did your experiences during that time inform your music, and how have you found the transition from university town back to the city generally?
‘The Monologues’ is a whole swirl of things rattling round my head during third year of uni at Durham. I was studying History at the time, with a lot of focus on Russian cultural history. I had a lot of fun reading up on Cosmism (see above) and the surprisingly long list of important figures in Russia and the Soviet Union who adhered to this belief system, including Lunacharsky (the first Commissar for Enlightenment in the Soviet Union), Tsilokovsky (father of Russian Aeronautics) and Kazimir Malevich (abstract art pioneer responsible for the Black Square and subject of an essay I did on the colour white). My third year took place during the pandemic, so really my entire life was stripped down to writing songs, writing essays, playing spikeball and going to Big Tesco. I find supermarkets quite stimulating, ridiculous, inspiring at the best of times, but round then it could be the only time I’d get out all day, so it took on an extra magic, upon which I’d project the day’s readings about figures like Fedorov and imagine them interacting with something so mundane. With that loose idea in place, other lines and notes and thoughts began to coalesce around it into this poem… just the one monologue acutally.
I like a lot of my writing from that time at university, because there was so much space to think and learn and introduce these developed ideas into a pop context. While it’s great to be back in London where there’s infinitely more gigs to see and play, it does involve a lot of time-consuming activities to stay afloat, which squeezes out time to develop ideas and feed them into songs.
You have previously intersected with poetry collectives such Gobjaw and Blue Shout to showcase your work. How important have these groups been in influencing your work?
The initial benefit of engaging with these groups and attending their open mics was that it showed there were a lot of other people saying similar things to me, thinking about the same sorts of subjects. The first Blue Shout I went to, I was distinctly impressed by the quality of the performers but also the supportive atmosphere that made newcomers like myself feel encouraged to participate. I remember in particular Sophie Muir reading ‘I am a Princess,’ which covered a lot of similar ground to ‘The Monologues’ – particularly that gear shift between academic subject matter studied by day and pop subjects discussed down the pub. I felt like I was in the right place.
Since then, I’ve met a lot of amazing people at Blue Shout and Gobjaw and these interactions have spawned collaborations, sharing of influences, all sorts. I first spoke to Medb, who designed the album cover, at a Gobjaw event, taken initially by her poetry before discovering that her visual work and music were similarly fabulous.
What can we look forward to from yourself and the Orchestra next?
Next stop America! Not necessarily in terms of touring, but, returning to my academic leanings, as a subject. Another key influence from my third year studies was Jean Beaudrillard’s America, which alongside a burgeoning obsession with country music really got the ideas flowing. Anyone who’s seen our show will likely be aware that it is a fixation in many of our songs, and we are building towards exploring that in much greater depth on forthcoming releases. If you have any contact with Jack White, please put us in touch, as he should be the one to produce this stuff.
Words: Dan Webster // Photos: Amelia Hawes
‘Raised on Red Milk’ is out now via Kitchen Practice Records. Stream or download the album via Bandcamp.