Chris Mills

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BY JOHN SCHACHT

A good many Chris Mills fans have longed for a return to the sharp-tongued, country-flavored vignettes of Every Night Fight for Your Life or the rich Spector textures and pleading heartbreak of Kiss It Goodbye, his first two full-lengths from 1998 and 2000, respectively. Since then Mills has wandered, with seemingly as little direction as the protagonist in Alexandria’s elegiac opener, “Wild Places,” through various stylistic shifts with too-often underwhelming results.

That’s what you get for setting the bar so high.

On his latest, though, Mills surrounds himself with a band —The Distant Stars — that proves up to the task of delivering his sharpest set of songs since those early days. Much of that credit goes to Norwegian co-producer Crister Knutsen. His piano parts form the backbone of Alexandria’s ambitious pop songs like “Rubicon” and “Castaways,” songs that also recall Kiss It Goodbye’s rueful scenarios.

Mills’ narratives still suit his yearning vocals, minus his younger self’s stinging, often self-lacerating barbs. In their place are stories where the “lights are fading from our eyes,” as he sings on the orchestrated ballad “When We Were Young,” and pleas for maturity and understanding —“Let us know what we have been, let us become what we will be, in the quiet corners of the earth or in the crowded city streets,” he sings on the grand tableau of “Quiet Corners.”

Mills can still crush a sad-bastard ballad, as he does over solo piano on “The Sweet Hereafter,” his voice cracking over weeper-lines like “there is magic in the mountains, but we live down on these streets/one day we may lay beneath meadows full of grass/or be buried beneath concrete.” But Mills is at his best on the up-tempo, Farfisa-accented rock of the title track, where his entreaties take on the urgency that characterized his early works. Mills likens the search for understanding and peace of mind to the lost languages that vanished with the burning of the library at Alexandria.

That scenario doesn’t exactly inspire warm-and-cuddly feelings, and without the restless angst of those earlier records the heavy weight of disappointment can suffocate the feint-of-heart over the course of the whole record. But Mills’ music has never been about easy answers, and his songwriting here is, for the first time in a while, practically impeachable. Besides, it’s the search that defines most of our lives’ meaning, which Mills captures here better than he has in a long time - Blurt! Online

Chris Mills returned to his old stomping ground Schubas on Friday night. "Welcome home!" a man in the audience shouted early in the set. The crowd laughed. So did Mills. It was the warmest of homecomings.

The singer-songwriter relocated to New York 10 years ago, but Chicago is where he originally made his name. Mills released his first album in 1996. Back then he moved in a circle of Windy City musicians who all fell loosely under the alt-country umbrella, including Jon Langford, Robbie Fulks, Kelly Hogan and Edith Frost.

Those folks all continue to have individual styles and Mills is no exception. Now as then, his songs are literate and whip-smart, a shrewd mix of alternative rock, chamber folk and power pop.

Dressed in a suit jacket and horn-rimmed glasses, Mills kicked off his set with the spare cry of "Wild Places," the lead track on his new album "Alexandria." The song's narrator is a traveler who brings back a message: "Hold on to the ones that love you / and to your heart always be true." The words may look simple on the page, but they sounded earned and weighty in his world-weary reading.

Mills switched between keyboards and guitar throughout the set. He was complemented by the Distant Stars, his skillful backing trio that featured Ryan Hembrey on bass and the Norwegian musicians Paal Hausken on drums and Christer Knutsen on guitar and keyboards. The sound mix found an elegant balance between restraint and power, showcasing every glistening vocal harmony and ringing guitar riff.

Mills was a casual and funny frontman between songs, but all emotional focus once the song kicked off. His scorched, yearning voice is a memorable instrument, landing somewhere between the Replacements' Paul Westerberg and proto-punk folkie Jonathan Richman. His potent pipes soared above the galloping drums, tinkling piano and strummed power chords of "Alexandria." He turned in a soulful, haunted reading of "Chris Mills is Living the Dream." - Chicago Tribune

Chris Mills had big ambitions for his latest album but only three days to record it.
By Bob Mehr

When Chris Mills entered downtown's Wall to Wall studio in January, he had a lot to do and not much time to do it. He'd hired 16 musicians to help make his fourth album, the orch-pop opus The Wall to Wall Sessions, and was planning to have it finished--entirely recorded and mixed--in just three days. Cost considerations were part of the reason, but he also wanted to thumb his nose at modern recording methods, which he says prize technical precision over the spirit of the performance. "If you listen to old Atlantic R & B from the 50s, even the early Elvis records, they just sound good," Mills says. "It's only a couple mikes and a couple guys in a room--a really rudimentary recording setup. The vocals distort and overdrive and everything--and that's the take they keep. Whereas today, somebody would go into Pro Tools and redraw the shape of a wave form to take the distortion out. I just wanted to go in the complete opposite direction from that."

Starting in the mid-90s Mills was a regular performer around town, both as a solo artist and in groups like the Fruit Bats and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. But in the summer of 2003, after finishing a tour behind his 2002 album, The Silver Line, he moved to New York City. ("For a girl," he says, "the same reason you do anything, really.") He spent the next year there writing songs, playing the occasional gig, and working at Music Together, a Brooklyn music school.

By the fall of 2004 Mills had a batch of new songs and was itching to record again. But he'd begun to move away from the charmingly melancholy--if occasionally mopey--alt-country of his previous records; he was studying songwriters like George Gershwin and Cole Porter, and thinking of ways to integrate their styles with the aesthetic of modern bands he enjoyed like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Flaming Lips. The new material seemed to demand a more orchestral sound, but because Mills was planning to finance the record himself he didn't have the money for hours of recording, multitracking, and mixing. He also didn't have the inclination, given his experience making The Silver Line.

"I found the whole process of mixing the record, poring over the tracks, and nudging this one dB this way and that way entirely tedious," he says. "You spend a lot of time doing things that really aren't gonna matter to anyone and don't have that much to do with the songs, or with what you're trying to get across. In fact it can stand between the listener and the music, as opposed to connecting them. Instead I wanted to get a big group of talented musicians that I loved, put 'em all in one room, and just lay it down. I wanted to release a record exactly as it was played and let the songs and the arrangements do the talking."

After seeing Wall to Wall's 850-square-foot main room during a visit last September, Mills was sold on recording the new album back in Chicago. He gathered up the core members of his old backing band, the City That Works--drummer Gerald Dowd, bassist Ryan Hembrey, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and multi-instrumentalist Dave Max Crawford--and began soliciting local brass and string players, percussionists, and vocalists. In advance of the three-day session, Mills put together what he calls "a sort of fake version of the record with cheap MIDI samples" with New York-based arranger David Nagler and sent the demos to the players.

Mills scheduled two days of rehearsals at Wall to Wall with the full band, but he arrived in town in the midst of a snowstorm that kept many of the musicians homebound; no more than six players wound up making it to either of the practices. Mills was understandably nervous when the full band gathered a few days later for the first recording date, as was studio owner Dan Dietrich--he'd never engineered such a large live session before. "He was joking that he wasn't gonna show up," Mills says.

With Mills, Kelly Hogan, and Nora O'Connor holed up in the vocal booth and the rest of the band on the main floor, the group recorded live to two-track. They cut no more than five takes of each song, usually nailing it on the second or third pass. "It was entirely mixed on the fly," Mills says. "No overdubs--just two little edits on the entire disc. Essentially every second and every note that you hear was played and mixed simultaneously."

The Wall to Wall Sessions is Mills's finest album to date, and much of the credit does have to go to the recording method--there's a thrilling immediacy to the organic, live performances. But the ten songs on the album also show his growth as a songwriter. The mood constantly shifts--the stark opener, "Chris Mills Is Living the Dream," is an existential anthem that opens with - Chicago Reader

Chris Mills had big ambitions for his latest album but only three days to record it.
By Bob Mehr

When Chris Mills entered downtown's Wall to Wall studio in January, he had a lot to do and not much time to do it. He'd hired 16 musicians to help make his fourth album, the orch-pop opus The Wall to Wall Sessions, and was planning to have it finished--entirely recorded and mixed--in just three days. Cost considerations were part of the reason, but he also wanted to thumb his nose at modern recording methods, which he says prize technical precision over the spirit of the performance. "If you listen to old Atlantic R & B from the 50s, even the early Elvis records, they just sound good," Mills says. "It's only a couple mikes and a couple guys in a room--a really rudimentary recording setup. The vocals distort and overdrive and everything--and that's the take they keep. Whereas today, somebody would go into Pro Tools and redraw the shape of a wave form to take the distortion out. I just wanted to go in the complete opposite direction from that."

Starting in the mid-90s Mills was a regular performer around town, both as a solo artist and in groups like the Fruit Bats and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. But in the summer of 2003, after finishing a tour behind his 2002 album, The Silver Line, he moved to New York City. ("For a girl," he says, "the same reason you do anything, really.") He spent the next year there writing songs, playing the occasional gig, and working at Music Together, a Brooklyn music school.

By the fall of 2004 Mills had a batch of new songs and was itching to record again. But he'd begun to move away from the charmingly melancholy--if occasionally mopey--alt-country of his previous records; he was studying songwriters like George Gershwin and Cole Porter, and thinking of ways to integrate their styles with the aesthetic of modern bands he enjoyed like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Flaming Lips. The new material seemed to demand a more orchestral sound, but because Mills was planning to finance the record himself he didn't have the money for hours of recording, multitracking, and mixing. He also didn't have the inclination, given his experience making The Silver Line.

"I found the whole process of mixing the record, poring over the tracks, and nudging this one dB this way and that way entirely tedious," he says. "You spend a lot of time doing things that really aren't gonna matter to anyone and don't have that much to do with the songs, or with what you're trying to get across. In fact it can stand between the listener and the music, as opposed to connecting them. Instead I wanted to get a big group of talented musicians that I loved, put 'em all in one room, and just lay it down. I wanted to release a record exactly as it was played and let the songs and the arrangements do the talking."

After seeing Wall to Wall's 850-square-foot main room during a visit last September, Mills was sold on recording the new album back in Chicago. He gathered up the core members of his old backing band, the City That Works--drummer Gerald Dowd, bassist Ryan Hembrey, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and multi-instrumentalist Dave Max Crawford--and began soliciting local brass and string players, percussionists, and vocalists. In advance of the three-day session, Mills put together what he calls "a sort of fake version of the record with cheap MIDI samples" with New York-based arranger David Nagler and sent the demos to the players.

Mills scheduled two days of rehearsals at Wall to Wall with the full band, but he arrived in town in the midst of a snowstorm that kept many of the musicians homebound; no more than six players wound up making it to either of the practices. Mills was understandably nervous when the full band gathered a few days later for the first recording date, as was studio owner Dan Dietrich--he'd never engineered such a large live session before. "He was joking that he wasn't gonna show up," Mills says.

With Mills, Kelly Hogan, and Nora O'Connor holed up in the vocal booth and the rest of the band on the main floor, the group recorded live to two-track. They cut no more than five takes of each song, usually nailing it on the second or third pass. "It was entirely mixed on the fly," Mills says. "No overdubs--just two little edits on the entire disc. Essentially every second and every note that you hear was played and mixed simultaneously."

The Wall to Wall Sessions is Mills's finest album to date, and much of the credit does have to go to the recording method--there's a thrilling immediacy to the organic, live performances. But the ten songs on the album also show his growth as a songwriter. The mood constantly shifts--the stark opener, "Chris Mills Is Living the Dream," is an existential anthem that opens with - Chicago Reader

“‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’ is a gem of pop grandeur that showcases Mills’ emotional vocal delivery.” ” - Chicago Sun Times

“‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’ is a gem of pop grandeur that showcases Mills’ emotional vocal delivery.” ” - Chicago Sun Times

"Over the last few years (Mills) has quietly assembled an immensely impressive catalogue. His songs are literate, funny and endearingly hangdog …..”” - The Independent, UK

"Over the last few years (Mills) has quietly assembled an immensely impressive catalogue. His songs are literate, funny and endearingly hangdog …..”” - The Independent, UK

“Interviews: Q&A: Chris Mills And Bird Of Youth's Beth Wawerna On Collaboration, Long-Simmering Songs And Ideas Of Brooklyn Tonight two Brooklyn-based acts, Chris Mills and Bird Of Youth, will celebrate the release of their new albums at the Rock Shop. Mills is commemorating the release of The Heavy Years: 2000-2010 (Ernest Jenning), which chronicles the past decade of his resplendent, Americana-tinged pop; Bird Of Youth, which began as the project of Beth Wawerna and blossomed into a band, will honor the release of Defender (Jagjaguwar), a sultry, harmony-rich record full of indelible hooks and whip-smart one-liners. Over oysters at Walter Foods, I spoke to Mills and Wawerna (who, full disclosure, are pals of mine) about their influences, what it's like to look back, and the idea that non-New Yorkers have of Brooklyn. ” - Maura Johnston

“Interviews: Q&A: Chris Mills And Bird Of Youth's Beth Wawerna On Collaboration, Long-Simmering Songs And Ideas Of Brooklyn Tonight two Brooklyn-based acts, Chris Mills and Bird Of Youth, will celebrate the release of their new albums at the Rock Shop. Mills is commemorating the release of The Heavy Years: 2000-2010 (Ernest Jenning), which chronicles the past decade of his resplendent, Americana-tinged pop; Bird Of Youth, which began as the project of Beth Wawerna and blossomed into a band, will honor the release of Defender (Jagjaguwar), a sultry, harmony-rich record full of indelible hooks and whip-smart one-liners. Over oysters at Walter Foods, I spoke to Mills and Wawerna (who, full disclosure, are pals of mine) about their influences, what it's like to look back, and the idea that non-New Yorkers have of Brooklyn. ” - Maura Johnston

“ Chris Mills.....should be a star, and would be if the world would wake up to his talents. He's an ideal example of a genuinely deserving musician, one possessing the hooks, instincts and sheer savvy to share the same stage with Springsteen, Mellencamp, Petty, or for that matter, any of the other populist icons the media has so freely embraced. ” - Lee Zimmer

“ Chris Mills.....should be a star, and would be if the world would wake up to his talents. He's an ideal example of a genuinely deserving musician, one possessing the hooks, instincts and sheer savvy to share the same stage with Springsteen, Mellencamp, Petty, or for that matter, any of the other populist icons the media has so freely embraced. ” - Lee Zimmer

“ “Underrated” is very often an inappropriately used word in reviews. Chris Mills however, is definitely underrated, for he too is some kind of musical genius, but you’d never know it from the paucity of critical approval, or indeed sales, that comes his way. The proof of said genius lies in the grooves, or whatever CDs have, of this Best Of set. All but two tracks are taken from his last four studio albums, and they show a mighty range and a fearsome lyrical talent. Every song would be a standout on lesser albums, whether it’s the power pop of “Atom Smashers” (which namedrops everyone from the Statue of Liberty to Emperor Tojo – which he deftly rhymes with Toto), the brass heavy “A Farewell to Arms”, or the epic “Signal/Noise”. Mills knows his pop, and marries great hooks and tunes to serious and thoughtful lyrics, as on the wonderful late night lament “Diamond” or the jagged and driving “All You Ever Do”. ” - Americana UK

“ “Underrated” is very often an inappropriately used word in reviews. Chris Mills however, is definitely underrated, for he too is some kind of musical genius, but you’d never know it from the paucity of critical approval, or indeed sales, that comes his way. The proof of said genius lies in the grooves, or whatever CDs have, of this Best Of set. All but two tracks are taken from his last four studio albums, and they show a mighty range and a fearsome lyrical talent. Every song would be a standout on lesser albums, whether it’s the power pop of “Atom Smashers” (which namedrops everyone from the Statue of Liberty to Emperor Tojo – which he deftly rhymes with Toto), the brass heavy “A Farewell to Arms”, or the epic “Signal/Noise”. Mills knows his pop, and marries great hooks and tunes to serious and thoughtful lyrics, as on the wonderful late night lament “Diamond” or the jagged and driving “All You Ever Do”. ” - Americana UK

“ “Underrated” is very often an inappropriately used word in reviews. Chris Mills however, is definitely underrated, for he too is some kind of musical genius, but you’d never know it from the paucity of critical approval, or indeed sales, that comes his way. The proof of said genius lies in the grooves, or whatever CDs have, of this Best Of set. All but two tracks are taken from his last four studio albums, and they show a mighty range and a fearsome lyrical talent. Every song would be a standout on lesser albums, whether it’s the power pop of “Atom Smashers” (which namedrops everyone from the Statue of Liberty to Emperor Tojo – which he deftly rhymes with Toto), the brass heavy “A Farewell to Arms”, or the epic “Signal/Noise”. Mills knows his pop, and marries great hooks and tunes to serious and thoughtful lyrics, as on the wonderful late night lament “Diamond” or the jagged and driving “All You Ever Do”. ” - Americana UK

“ “Underrated” is very often an inappropriately used word in reviews. Chris Mills however, is definitely underrated, for he too is some kind of musical genius, but you’d never know it from the paucity of critical approval, or indeed sales, that comes his way. The proof of said genius lies in the grooves, or whatever CDs have, of this Best Of set. All but two tracks are taken from his last four studio albums, and they show a mighty range and a fearsome lyrical talent. Every song would be a standout on lesser albums, whether it’s the power pop of “Atom Smashers” (which namedrops everyone from the Statue of Liberty to Emperor Tojo – which he deftly rhymes with Toto), the brass heavy “A Farewell to Arms”, or the epic “Signal/Noise”. Mills knows his pop, and marries great hooks and tunes to serious and thoughtful lyrics, as on the wonderful late night lament “Diamond” or the jagged and driving “All You Ever Do”. ” - Americana UK

"Chris Mills is the best songwriter we have in Gotham currently.....That said, whether the tracks date from 2011 or a decade previous, those compiled on Heavy Years: 2000-2010 are among some of the best songs you’ll hear. Ever."

- Rob Browning

"Chris Mills is the best songwriter we have in Gotham currently.....That said, whether the tracks date from 2011 or a decade previous, those compiled on Heavy Years: 2000-2010 are among some of the best songs you’ll hear. Ever."

- Rob Browning