pop*eye...Amy Millan - Masters of the Burial (2009)

All this version illuminates is the "yes" on the vacancy sign.



-the portastylistic

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Amy Millan - Masters of the Burial (2009)

These album titles are starting to make Stars vocalist Amy Milan seem a little bit death-obsessed. First Honey from the Tombs, now Masters of the Burial. Exactly what is it that's drawing Milan to the cemetery, and why is it sweet? The best bet for figuring that out is probably in the sophomore album of Milan's alt-country leaning solo project. Hopefully after a listen to Masters of the Burial, you won't be drawn into Milan's thanatology. Or hopefully you will.

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by— Dan Weiss
Broken Social Scene are having a tough time with covers. First they neuter "Love Will Tear Us Apart", now BSS/Stars scenester Amy Millan takes Death Cab for Cutie to the country only to shoot them out back. Gibbard and Co. have always snuck a bunch of reluctantly crafty tunes on each album to squeak by, and "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is one of the most enduring. But Milan's sleepy rendition, with its half-formulated harmonies, over-mannered pedal steel, and microwaved guitar licks, makes the original sound like Sleater-Kinney in comparison. "Dark" has a great melody, and it's not difficult to imagine it as a standard. It's like Death Cab's "Yesterday" or something, but most people don't consider "Yesterday" the Beatles' best tune. Still, with some inspiration, the blandly honey-tongued Millan might've illuminated one of the band's trickier highlights and given it its proper due, up there with the doomed-union sketch "Cath..." or the underrated, Paul Simon-esque "Brothers on a Hotel Bed".



by Spencer Kornhaber

Whether mourning lost loves with Stars or on her own, this Canadian songstress consistently stares in one direction: backward. So, while her 2006 solo debut peppered its country-ish crooning with the swooning rock of her friends in Broken Social Scene, this follow-up burrows back to a pre-indie rock period. But, save for a few inspired touches, like the Burt Bacharach-indebted ’60s-pop horns floating through opener “Bruised Ghosts,” Masters of the Burial lacks the character to be more than the sum of its lovely parts: fiddles, regret, and a pretty voice.

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All about
Amy Milan

Amy Millan is a Canadian indie rock singer and guitarist, recording and performing with the bands Stars and Broken Social Scene. Her debut solo album, Honey From The Tombs, was released by Arts & Crafts on May 30, 2006. In interviews Amy has stated that the songs on Honey from the Tombs were written over a period of years, but are only now being released.

All the touring with my various bands was coming to a stop, and I had to find a bed. An old friend gave me her Montreal room where I could smoke too much and burn her copper pots. The rest of the songs took shape from the quiet back porch of that temporary refuge. I have always loved to sing other people's songs, which is why this record is painted with them. I Gathering up a few songs that I wish I had written, I tried to bring a little something different to them. I had the good fortune of hearing Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard sing "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" every night when Stars went out on tour with them. Sarah Harmer was playing in Weeping Tile when I was first introduced to her music. You could roast a marshmallow with her beautiful voice and I have always felt "Old Perfume" was a little gem hidden inside a more ruckus mine. "Run For Me" was a song that carried me through a difficult period and articulated something I couldn't. Richard Hawley's production of that song is so incredibly beautiful and rich; the only thing I could do was to bring it back to a ‘barely there’. If you have heard her own records, or listened to Honey From The Tombs, then you will already be acquainted with the strong song writing skills of my great friend Jenny Whiteley. "Baby I" was the only cover song I did on my last record, but I had to go back to her for more. "Day To Day" is from her second record, Hope Town, and a love song that sounds like the wind wrote it. The melody, like a hymn, feels as though it’s from another time, and another place - the middle of the sea perhaps, in 1863. The songs I penned myself came from a time of flux, trying to get to the bottom of what "home" really means. The same questions kept coming up for me; where do we stash the collection of betrayals and disappointments we carry through our lives? If you find yourself miles away from a person with whom your communication has become crooked and bent, can you ever find your way back? Do we ever actually "get over" anything? Together, my own songs and these covers create a bed where the lonely can rest for a little bit, where little hopes, little deaths, and big loves are flammable but fallow. Every idea needs a backdrop and that's where Mr. Martin Davis Kinack (Apostle of Hustle, BSS) comes in. He showed me to a barn by the escarpment cliffs, we put on our pajamas and got buried in snow. I was able to bring so many of my comrades to this hidden forest, the ones who had toured with me on my last record: Dan Whiteley, Christine Bougie, Darcy Yates and Doug Tielli. Other guests slid in like a sleeping bag, such as the fast fingered Marc Roy (guitar), Dean Stone of Apostle of Hustle (drums), Kevin Fox (cello), and Genevieve Walker (violin). Singing such beautiful back ups, my very close friends, Leslie Feist, Ariel Engle and Jenny Whiteley, came to support not just the songs, but me! Hot Butterscotch, aka Stars' Evan Cranley and Chris Seligman along with The Stills' Liam O’Neil, killed the smooth on the horns. Jesse Zubot was my most futuristic musician, sending his amazing violin parts on "Bound" over the internet, as I couldn't persuade him to leave his busy Vancouver home. I think it sounds like he's standing right beside me. So, as you can see "solo work" is a bit of a fib. Without this community, the record would be a lonely, less interesting listen. This record is the dark of the night. It's the sound of someone climbing into bed. The soundtrack of the time in between when the candle burns out and your dreams begin. The time of night when all we have tried to bury comes back to us masked in midnight mind stories. Light the fire, pour up one more, draw the curtains and tuck in.

more on...amyspace

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“ Lovelorn, low-key musings from somber songbird.”


-the portastylistic