Milk N Cookies

Milk 'N' Cookies formed in the early 1970s in Woodmere, Long Island, a short drive from the bustling proto-punk scene in New York City. Their output, collected on this Captured Tracks anthology, was a precursor to U.S. power pop, and they helped create the tough glam aesthetic that continued to rear it's sequined head from the New Romantics to hair metal to Britpop and beyond. In their very first photo shoot, Milk 'N' Cookies sport long manes of brown hair, wearing novelty bowties and clutching teddy bears, yet the songs compiled on their first LP, reissued here by Captured Tracks, are all about girls, sex, and letting loose, still slightly scandalous subjects for suburban America at that point. Frontman Justin Strauss uses a sing-song, breathy voice, like a lovesick schoolboy taunting his crush on the playground. It's not emasculating at all, more of an assertion of desire that makes every Milk 'N' Cookies song seem ripped from a teenager's diary (which they very well may have been). For the non-connoisseur, Milk 'N' Cookies may not hold an immediate appeal, but for even the most casual '70s rock enthusiast, this collection is nothing short of essential.