August 16, 2000

London Brixton Windmill

[B]Mills[/B] sounds like country, reads like the blues and feels totally divine.

The genre of country has countenanced many dips into the impenetrable darkness of the human condition, but rarely does it strike as hard or as convincingly as this. In a honeyed choke, Chris Mills closes his eyes and whispers, "I'm gonna let my kids play with guns/ Don't wanna raise another one like me". Not a drop of unnecessary drama, not one note of extraneous self-pity, just Mills lost in the midst of his white-trash melodrama.

To look at him, you wouldn't think Mills had it in him, resembling as he does an amiable collegiate who'd clear your drive for a couple of extra pennies. But, with guitar strapped about his person, the Illinois singer/songwriter cleaves away any nonsense to deliver these melody-dipped character sketches. And despite the occasionally stinging realism, despite these stripped-down surroundings, there's a comforting sumptuousness to Mills' songs, delivered with a shaggy passion that recalls similar bar-stool bards Paul Westerberg or Bob Mould.

The tempo's picked up now, Mills' buzzing six-string ringing out some bizarre celebratory coast. He's smiling, howling,"Gonna take a straight razor to my crooked vein". Walking miles in unfamiliar footwear with each song, Mills sounds like country, reads like the blues and feels totally divine.