Chris Mills – Living In The Aftermath

Pow! Biff! With a pounding rush of fear-fueled adrenaline, we “run with out sabers and our guns” in a futile attempt to escape the apocalypse. We feed the war machine to save our wives and babies from the vampires and the aliens, until we break ranks and escape to an even worse fate.

Chris Mills isn’t the first to offer a musical assessment of America’s current malaise in striking metaphors, but Living In The Aftermath makes the rest of the field seem ho hum. No brooding, here, or even explicit rage. Instead Mills makes his point in thrills and chills. He employs the fulsome rock arrangements he favors like the soundtrack to a fast-paced, white-knuckle action flick with monsters lurking around every corner.

The energy in his singing is explosive, too. Mills has always had a gift for emotional immediacy, and Living In The Aftermath gives it full range. His urgent but tender concern, even despair, dramatizes the “Twilight Zone”-inspired plight of an airline passenger in “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet”. “Atom Smasher” kisses most of history goodbye in an eclectic itemized list, but defiantly promises “my heart’s coming with me.”

“All’s Well That Ends”, with its “two-headed calves and blood-filled rivers,” is an indictment of science and religion. “Blackbirds” invokes the mood of a Hitchcock thriller to reflect on the empty life of a coquette past her prime. But the purity of true love in “Such A Beautiful Thing” and “Can’t Believe” is as dear as that $3 box of Good & Plenty at the refreshment stand.