There is not enough anger at the world in so much music these days but Millie Manders is a very welcome exception to that. Millie Manders and the Shutup has just released a new double A-side single which includes two songs in which Millie pours out her rage with unparalleled fury. The ire and outrage switches are set higher than they have ever been. On the classy and punky “Can I Get Off” Millie takes aim at how the mainstream media and so many people in the world have stood by while the Israel Defence Force commits acts against the Palestinian people that are tantamount to genocide. But she doesn’t direct her venomous and righteous rancour only at what is going on in Gaza she talks of Chad, Ethiopia, Congo, China, Sudan, and the refugees that risk their lives to cross the channel. It riles me that so many people have fallen for the “you can’t criticise the Israeli government because it is anti-semitic” line. It is not, I despise what the Israeli government is doing, but I don’t hate Jewish people. In exactly the same way I despise everything about Hamas, but not all Palestinians are Hamas. This conflict has been around for years and did not just begin when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th last year. Millie takes on the “if you are against Israel you must support Hamas” line head-on in the lyric “Am I siding with Hamas? Are you gonna ask that one again?” I am 100% behind her on this. Millie talks of white fragility and our need to side with aggressors because there is money in weapons, oil, and gold. The UK government is complicit with so much of the world’s oppression and killing, it needs to stop.
In the song’s coda she calls on the “boys in bands” to speak out, rather than be quiet and worry about losing followers. If your followers (and I include mine in that) are too cowardly to say anything while people are being murdered then we don’t fucking need them! Shouting “Fuck The Tories” at gigs is fine, but it isn’t enough. Most people that follow bands probably hate the Tories but are uninformed or scared when it comes to other conflicts in the world. Millie says this of the song, “The western world is privileged because it has pillaged resources from everyone else in the world. We need to unlearn what we know and recognise the suffering people are going through as a result of our greed. “Can I Get Off? is an outpouring of my frustrations about that and, ultimately, the reason we are fundraising for Mercy Without Limits.” The non-profit organisation Mercy Without Limits mission is “To educate and empower women and children by enabling them to have an effective and positive role in constructing a better society.” They began by working in Syria but now work in many areas of conflict in the middle- east, including Gaza. Listen to this song NOW and fucking learn from it! While you’re at it make a donation to Mercy Without Limits if you can.
The second song is closer in style to Millie Manders and the Shutup’s root ska punk sound and is called “Angry Side” and Millie spoke about it as “I guess, a letter from my teenage self, apologising for being so angry and wanting to burn down the world. I had a lot going on back then and I hid behind bravado a lot. I suppose it’s also me telling my younger self that it’s OK to have been that angry when I went through a bunch of trauma that I couldn’t process well enough to deal with it all. I was a kid.” This is Millie once again in purposeful and passionate flow and reaching out to forgive her younger self. Maybe we all need to look inside ourselves in that way. I have two main rules in life, 1. Don’t be a dick and 2. Be more kind. Now I have a third rule, Be more Millie Manders!
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