We toil with what's ahead, but know what's possible, what's futile and how it can distort — even control — our everyday. It is exhausting and forgets those who just need need to be in the present.
If Flasher's self-titled EP shattered the self as a means of making something new, then the D.C. post-punk trio's first single as a newly-signed group to Domino Records wants to encourage everyone to "escape to something new and unknown" beyond the future's stranglehold.
The band tells NPR that "Skim Milk" is about more than just what's next:
The themes in "Skim Milk" and its video might be described as being haunted by your own desire for belonging. We're not bemoaning "no future, no fate," we're advocating for it. From getting a mortgage, to going to college, to crafting public policy, folks are always telling you to think of your future, to make choices in the name of some future. But most folks don't have the privilege to live outside the present. This kind of future tense, aspirational bulls*** means being held hostage by a future that's already abandoned you. We'd rather escape to something new and unknown than hold out for a good life that hates us and expects us to make lemonade out of miserableness. Instead of holding out and hanging on, we're here to tell you (and ourselves): "go."
"Skim Milk" is as stylish as anything Flasher's previously released, but now its silk-rippling cool fully comes into view. Despite the band name, Emma Baker's drumming is never flashy, but crisp and melodically attuned to Daniel Saperstein's leading bass lines. Taylor Mulitz, likewise, is minimal in his guitar work, but threads space like a needle through constellations — holding onto a note just long enough to hit the next star. The thrill is in the call-and-response, heard on past songs, but here weaponized like an ecstatic hall of mirrors in the final minute of "Skim Milk."
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