Milly
MILLY makes anthemic and immediate alt-rock. Despite their palpable anxiety, the Los Angeles band’s songs are so urgent that there’s always a sense of relief and rejuvenation. Armed with towering, surging guitar riffs, crystalline and inviting hooks, and a newfound collaborative approach, their sophomore LP Your Own Becoming feels like a total reinvention. What was once a solo outlet for primary songwriter Brendan Dyer is now a full-fledged quartet. More than that, the album is a document of how doubling down on your art in the face of serious fear and doubt can be grounding. Across 10 pummeling and undeniable songs, Your Own Becoming finds its power in channeling your darkest thoughts into something galvanizing and productive.
Work on this release started thanks to a revelation that can only come from a period of personal crisis. Dyer, who’s dealt with anxiety for most of his life, decided to go on long walks every morning where he’d process his emotions, clear his mind, and do something that got him out of the house. “I think about death all the time,” says Dyer. “At this point in my life, I’m extremely aware of how time moves quickly.” While these thoughts could have devolved into potentially overwhelming him, this daily ritual allowed him some space. He jotted down notes from his dreams and he used his dread to grab onto the sustaining force in his life: his band. While the band’s debut LP 2022’s Eternal Ring and past tours with Swervedriver were successes, he wanted to be laser-focused on both his songwriting and his bandmates in the following year as he’d never done before.
On New Year’s Day, 2023, he corralled his bandmates to write and demo out Your Own Becoming, their most confident and organic effort to date. Dyer would take ideas he wrote down on his daily walks and each week, the band would meet up without fail. “There was newfound discipline and a renewed excitement about our music,” says Dyer. “I had always wanted to have a band that would just get together every week. Even if we’re not writing, we’re hanging out all the time, we’re listening to music together, and we’re jamming.” Dyer partly credits the collective laser focus on this album with how the band’s live lineup gelled from touring with bands like Teethe and waveform* as well as a burgeoning friendship with engineer and producer Sonny DiPerri (NIN, Narrow Head, My Bloody Valentine). “We were really inspired by him,” says Dyer. “Thanks to him we realized we could step things up a notch.”
After a few months of painstakingly demoing songs, Dyer, along with bassist Yarden Erez and drummer Connor Frankel, decamped with DiPerri to East West Studios and Dangerbird’s Recording Studio in Los Angeles. (New guitarist Nico Moreta joined the band after recording). The shimmering lead single “Drip From The Fountain” served as the North Star for the entire LP. By far the most infectious song of their entire catalog with an explosive chorus and airtight melodic hooks that recall early Death Cab For Cutie, it still captures Dyer’s clock-ticking despair. He sings, “And the dust holds the time / I know I know it’s running out and there’s nothing left to say.” It’s a song about seizing the moment instead of falling into time-wasting, depressive habits. The motivating content of the song mirrored Dyer and his bandmate’s obsession with making the best record they possibly could.
So much of Your Own Becoming thrives on catharsis: hair-raising moments where everything locks into place from the driving arrangements to Dyer’s keen ear for a memorable chorus. “We wanted to make something really special and really big,” says Dyer. “We wanted to kind of just elevate everything as much as possible.” For the band that meant unlearning the impulse to overstuff the songs and extend the runtime. Tracks like the ripping single “Spilling Ink” prove why less is more was the right approach. The fastest-paced song that they’ve ever made, the song blitzes through its two-minute runtime with a searing riff and Dyer singing, “Summers gone again and gone until the end / Another town lined with picket fence / Tell it bye my friend and gone into the end.” Inspired by the simplicity of iconic rock trios like Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr., it wastes no second. “I grew up on slowcore but for this record, I just wanted to make things super-straightforward,” says Dyer. “No convoluted parts, no bullshit. I just wanted to make something that would explode.”
Just as the band avoided clouding its songs in complicated arrangements, Your Own Becoming finds its resonance in emotional directness. The cathartic centerpiece of the LP is the single “Bittersweet Mary.” Though it includes fantastical imagery of mystical creatures and golden keys, the message is clear and cathartic. Over a raging guitar riff, Dyer sings, “I know you’re changing / I know you’re hanging on / I know you’re changing / When it’s all too much.” For Dyer, those lines were an encouraging reminder to himself when he felt like everything was hanging on by a thread. “It’s a song where I feel like I could cry when I’m singing near the end of the song,” he says. “It’s emotional for me because it’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written.”
Your Own Becoming is a resilient testament to leaning on the most sustaining and nourishing forces in your life when things get tough. In Dyer’s case, it’s the therapeutic practice of making art and getting together with his closest friends. By making the most assured album yet and getting together as much as they could, his bandmates helped him cope. “While the title speaks to our dedication to MILLY, Your Own Becoming is really what it’s like at the end of the finish line,” he says. “We moved through a lot of emotions, a lot of work, and jumped through so many hoops to end up on the other side. It’s the inevitable turnout of making it through better.”