London indie-punk band Fightmilk release a new double A-side single, Escape! From Camp Run For Your Life / Ghost Food, on 31 October (Halloween, naturally) on Fika Recordings and INH Records. The press release calls it a love letter to the horror genre, with nods to Goosebumps, Ghostwatch, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, camp outs in the woods and cursed video cassettes.
Singer Lily Rae says Escape! came from years of obsessively reading R.L. Stine's Goosebumps books as a kid, where "horrible things happen in broad daylight, your parents can't protect you and happy endings come with a caveat". As an adult with a lifelong anxiety problem, she found horror a weirdly comforting thing to turn to when the news is a constant stream of dread, and used it to translate what she calls her CONSTANT EXISTENTIAL DREAD into a song. The idea is that you can close the book or stop the film whenever you like.
The flip side, Ghost Food, takes its title from a line in The Night Alphabet by Joelle Taylor. Lily describes it as a "weird love song" about obsessive yearning, where the days are endless, food tastes of nothing and even the birdsong is annoying.
A band who formed in a Brixton pub garden in 2015 after two of them had just been dumped, and who decided an angry punk band was the cure, are exactly the sort I like to back. Turning childhood Goosebumps into a Halloween single is a fun angle, and I'm glad to back it.
It follows their 2024 album No Souvenirs and this year's single Sounds Like A You Problem, and the band describe a noisier, harder edge to their indie pop sound this time. Fightmilk are Lily (vocals, guitar), Alex (guitar, vocals), Healey (bass, vocals) and Nick (drums, vocals). Their earlier albums are Not With That Attitude (2018) and Contender (2021).
Live dates:
- 20 January – London, Fighting Cocks (supporting Hit Like A Girl)
- 28 February – London, Duck and Dive Festival at Signature Brew Haggerston