Amy Millan Goes Country, But Not Really, On Solo Debut

Most Canadian music fans know Amy Millan as the ethereal female voice behind Stars, most notably for the ubiquitous single "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead."

So the country flavour of her Honey From The Tombs solo debut will come as a surprise. The album's country-style tunes came naturally to Millan. The bulk of the songs were written over a period stretching from 1990 to 2000, and she says that much of the vibe came from her former roommates, bluegrass musicians Dan and Jenny Whiteley.

"They grew up playing music with their dad, Chris Whiteley. And I love The Sadies and I'm a huge fan of Neko Case. But I'm also a huge Brian Eno fan, and I like the way he can make these muted records and hard to grasp melodies that sound like they're from space. So I was trying to imagine how it would be to have a honky-tonk bar on Mars."

The Whiteleys and other members of their Toronto bluegrass collective, Crazy Strings, didn't just provide inspiration for Honey From The Tombs, they also join Millan in playing on it. But Millan's interests are too varied to totally restrict her songs to any particular genre.

The album was produced by Toronto rock hero Ian Blurton and Millan also employed the help of some of her Broken Social Scene pals. And she's adamant that, while the record has some country leanings, she's certainly not a purist.

"I don't think it's a country record. Some people say it's a bluegrass record and I'm like, 'Well, I guess you guys don't know bluegrass.' There's that one bluegrass song on there, for sure, but I am by no means a bluegrass player because I don't have the picking ability that bluegrass players have.

"My favourite country records are the recordings by Rick Rubin of Johnny Cash. I find that the idea behind a Tom Waits record is more of what I'm sort of attracted to than the sterile sound of some country records. Just because of the haphazard ability of having instrumentation that might be dictated as folk or blues, but it really comes across as pop music."

At the end of the day, Honey From The Tombs is simply a collection of songs about love and loss. That means that Amy Millan the solo singer isn't really all that different from Amy Millan of Stars.

"I write love songs," she states. "So there is a through line, for sure, with the fact that I ended up in that collective.

"I'm coming still from the same place. I'm the same person. Celebrating darkness is something we do well."