A Chicago resident via a circuitous route involving stints in other parts of the US and Germany; a short-haired, string-snapping, knee-jerking acoustic guitarist via long hair and speed metal bands; a songwriter of imaginative narratives via film school: Illinois-born Chris Mills sure gets around.
Luckily for us, Mills reneged on stabbing power chords for a while and took up with the alt-country/antifolk crowd, releasing albums such as Nobody's Favourite, Every Night Fight For Your Life and Kiss It Goodbye.
His songs sound like a mixture of Springsteen and Everclear: very American, but with an impassioned delivery that marks them out as special. He sings of all that matters in love and appears to have a thing about lips, but clearly can't make up his mind whether he should submit to the devastating pleasures of the flesh.
"Let me drink from your bee-stung lips," he sings in one song; "your lips are like poison," he sings in another. Picky, picky ....
Occasionally, his imagery gets bogged down in overbearing clichΘ (Signal/Noise being the prime example) but, for the most part, Mills is a rarity on the singer-songwriter scene: he wraps the brutal truth in sheaves of yearning melodies and tough guitar-playing. God knows what he'd be like with a band behind him. Pretty good, I'd guess. And loud with it.
