After Honey From The Tombs <\/i>finishes its brief run on your CD player, it\u2019s inevitable for the Neko Case comparisons to emerge. Both artists have strong country elements running throughout their albums, both contribute to Canadian supergroups (Case with The New Pornographers, Millan with the much-beloved Broken Social Scene) and both weave elements of David Lynch-like film noir into their albums. <\/p>\n
That said, give Honey From The Tombs<\/i> an honest ear to prove itself and you will be rewarded. While Case\u2019s latest output weighs heavily on mythology and devastating character profiles, Millan is content in reveling in a mood (usually melancholy and morose). <\/p>\n
As well-worn as the topics of loneliness and lost love are, credit Millan for being able to come up with simplistic lyrics that somehow sound fresh. \u201cI feel more burdened as the bourbon starts to seep,\u201d she laments on \u201cBlue in Yr Eye.\u201d On \u201cSkinny Boy\u201d we see a skinny boy (go figure) \u201call bones no lies\u201d who has lips \u201cI could spend a day with.\u201d In that song, listeners get a vivid sketch of a character — and they\u2019re barely through the first stanza. <\/p>\n
Alcohol plays a recurring theme in Honey From The Tombs<\/i>. In addition to the obvious titles \u201cHe Brings Out The Whiskey in Me\u201d and \u201cPour Me Another,\u201d some of the other songs sound tailored for a hard-drinking night (such as the Irish pub swing of \u201cRuby II\u201d). For some music geeks, this honesty may seem overly cloying, but it\u2019s likely that most fans will be able to forgive some of Millan\u2019s occasional lyrical excesses for the frankness of a line like \u201cIt\u2019s quarter dawn and the bottle\u2019s gone \/ Go to sleep before the sun gets strong.\u201d <\/p>\n
Millan\u2019s band provide enough musical diversity to keep Honey<\/i> from veering into piano bar territory. On \u201cHeadsfull,\u201d Sir Ian Blurton provides a great barroom percussion while guitarists Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning lay down a bluesy shuffle. The looping percussion of \u201cWayward and Parliament\u201d can almost be described as trip-hop (Blurton\u2019s work on this track is cited as \u201cweird noise\u201d in the liner notes.). <\/p>\n
As a debut, Honey From The Tombs <\/i>may not be a head-turner, but it will quickly be welcomed in a lonely late-night CD mix with a good flow of whiskey and cigarettes for good measure. Yes, we already have a Neko Case for late-night soundtracks. But Millan proves there\u2019s plenty of room for another wary voice of the lost and weary. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7861],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40058","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-amy-millan","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40058"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}