Ghosts weren’t meant for bleeding

The first time I heard Amy Millan’s solo debut single “Skinny Boy” I had heart palpitations.  It was/is such a damn fine song that I immediately inflated my hopes that it’s parent album Honey From the Tombs would be chock full of like-minded country-esque golden nuggets.  I say inflated because, in all honesty, it’s not an album I’ve returned very much since first listening to it.  I tried, I really did.  My brother-in-law loves it, can’t get enough of it, enthuses about it the way I never could bring myself.  My biggest criticism was that the album felt a little too patch work for someone of Millan’s artistic standard.  It makes sense that the songs would seem a little disjointed, as Millan herself has said it is a collection of songs she’d been writing her whole life.  You could feel it in the way some tracks butted up against each other like strangers in an elevator; forced to be in the same confined space but hardly comfortable with it.

For the follow up, Masters of the Burial, Millan manages to pull the 11 songs together into a cohesive whole the way she couldn’t on her first solo outing.  That’s an impressive fact given that she didn’t have a part in writing four of the 11 songs.  By now you’ve probably heard her lovely version of Death Cab For Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”, but of equal (if not greater note) is her subtle and supple reading of Sarah Harmer’s “Old Perfume”.  Maters of Burial reminds me of Joel Plaskett’s Three in that none of the songs clearly stand out from the others in the way that an obvious single sticks out like a sore thumb next to filler.  The simple and elegant “Towers” showcases Millan’s adept hand at folky-country-pop that isn’t afraid to get a bit orchestral on your ass, but the Kevin Drew co-written “Finish Line” is just as equally impressive.  There’s nothing as immediately catchy and infectious as “Skinny Boy” but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  What Masters of the Burial has that its predecessor doesn’t is staying power: this is going to be the Amy Millan album I can’t get enough of, I enthuse about, and listen to over and over and over.

I wonder if my brother-in-law will hate it.

MP3: Amy MIllan “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”
MP3: Amy Millan “Bruised Ghosts”
Myspace: Amy Millan
Twitter: Amy Millan

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