Honey From the Tombs

From the opening vocals that seem to channel Janis Joplin, Amy Millan draws from the musical past to create an album that’s more rooted in Americana than Norman Rockwell—strange since she is from Canada. With country and folk influences, the songs focus on the eternals: love, loss and whiskey. Millan’s voice dances between a girlish nonchalance and a deep melancholy, the whole time creating an almost dangerous appeal to a woman who often lyrically embraces a bottle of whiskey. The music and vocals are simple in the way Steinbeck’s writing was simple; deceptively so because each movement was meticulously created. A crowd of 20,000 fed through an extensive sound system does not deserve this honey; that honor should be reserved for intimate bars and lonely dirt roads. Just like it was back in the old days.