VIA PRESS RELEASE | In an era of unparalleled stupidity, political dysfunction, and societal collapse—couldn’t we all really use a new Dead Milkmen album? After nearly nine long years, that wish has been granted! Philadelphia’s satirical punk legends announce their new album Quaker City Quiet Pills today (out 6/9 via The Giving Groove), alongside the release of its first official single, “Grandpa’s Not A Racist (He Just Voted For One).”
A merciless, uncomfortably catchy first single, the track mocks the mental acrobatics of defending a Trump-loving grandparent (kudos to the band’s own Joe Jack Talcum for the hilarious illustration that doubles as the the single’s artwork!).
Quaker City Quiet Pills is the band’s first new album since 2014’s Pretty Music For Pretty People—and in sticking with The Giving Groove’s charitable revenue model, the Dead Milkmen have chosen to donate the label’s proceeds of Quaker City Quiet Pills revenue to Rock to the Future, a 501(c)3 organization that equips Philadelphia youth with life skills to support current and lifelong well-being through free, student-driven music programs.
Quaker City Quiet Pills is steeped in the trademark mix of energized punk hooks, irreverent humor, and biting social commentary that has animated this group since their historic arrival on the punk scene nearly 40 years ago. All four members had a hand in the songwriting, and the results are as eclectic and twisted as ever. Running the gamut from the BDSM nightmare “Philadelphia Femdom” to the jazzy hipster sendup “The New York Guide to Art” to the fantastical “Astral Dad,” which was written after singer/keyboardist Rodney Anonymous (a.k.a. Rodney Linderman) challenged Joe to write a song about astral projection.
Meanwhile, Rodney turns in some of his most unhinged material to date. He unleashes his frustrations with indecisive take-out customers on “How Do You Even Manage to Exist” (“I’m making fun of myself there—I get angry at everything,” Rodney explains), provides ingredients for an incantation on “Hen’s Teeth and Goofa Dust” (“If anyone is doing a spell in the future, they should use that,” Rodney says), and plays a brain-poisoned, white supremacist lowlife on “We Are (Clearly Not) the Master Race.”
