Like all good storytellers Steve Milligan has walked the road he writes and sings about.  Black is the Colour is his avenue to share his life experience and musical development. From Ireland to Australia, hardcore punk to acoustic folk, political to personal, front man to solo performer– with his debut EP Black is the Colour; Milligan presents a collection of insightful songs.

Chuck Ragan, Tom Gabel, Shane McGowan and Billy Bragg–are obvious points of reference to his acoustic singer/songwriter style but so are his peers in Donnie Dureau (Blueline Medic) and Jamie Hay (Conation/Fear Like Us) bringing as he does a similar Australian insight into the powerful critique ‘Terra Australis Uberalles’.

Milligan has a history of calling it as he sees it. Having helped spearhead the Australian punk and hardcore scene through most of ‘90’s with his bands Steadfast and One Inch Punch (later Mid Youth Crisis) he was known as much for his insightful and often confrontational lyrics as for his powerful melodic yet raw musical style. The band appealed to both fans of diehard hardcore punk and melodic pop as they shared stages with the likes of Mindsnare and Caustic Soda.

An extended hiatus from the music scene saw Milligan revisit his homeland in Ireland before returning to the musical fold with the more melodic indie rock of the Coue Method.

Milligan has long harbored a desire to connect with the traditional Irish musical style and although the Black is the Colour recording could hardly be labeled a ‘traditional’ record there’s none of the Plastic Paddy bullshit of scully caps, leprechaun tattoos and pints of Guinness either.

You are unlikely to hear a bleaker nor more beautiful song as the ‘Fall of Fatima’ with its reference to Dublin’s Mountjoy prison and when he sings “Baile Atha Cliath” -Gaelic for the Irish capital- on ‘Black Pool’ you know it’s coming from the heart.

Like many an Irish storyteller before him, Milligan has had to deal with his share of demons but the music has never strayed far. There’s only one word to describe a song like ‘Fallen Men’ – that word- honest.

Milligan says that the themes covered on the recording range from the personal- “addiction, recovery, death/loss, suicide, exile, abuse, love, hate and fear” to the more political “of nationalism, culture and the law.”

Though these are Milligan’s songs, on the laid back recording he was joined by a stellar cast of musical friends including Coue Method band mates Adrian Lombardi and Sam Johnson, the sweet vocal harmonies of Bec Martin and the stirring mandolin and banjo of Mark Jennings (The Currency, Mutiny).

While the acoustic songs of Black is the Colour may be more stripped his astute observations are no less challenging or intense than his days fronting Mid Youth Crisis. At times poignant ‘New Wave’ at others scathing ‘Critical Necessity what ties the songs on Black is the Colour together is their realness.

This has a lot to do with the fact that there’s nothing preconceived about Black is the Colour. It’s simply the sound of a talented songwriter doing what his kind has been doing for centuries: playing songs alongside a close group of friends not for hope of financial gains, but because he has something to say.

“Call it folk punk if you want to. The fact is these are some of the rawest no bullshit songs you’re gonna hear –folk, punk or otherwise.”
Tim Scott, Mess and Noise Magazine

“Each song is sung with passion and proves that just because it’s acoustic doesn’t mean it has to be a gingerly strummed melancholy wank.”
Jamie Hay, A Death in the Family/Fear Like Us