The Oregonian
Stretching country traditions
Julie Miller follows artistry and heartfelt lyrics into new terrain
Friday, August 13, 1999
By John Foyston, of The Oregonian staff
"Broken Things" is another great album from Julie Miller and an admirable introduction, if you still need one, to the glory of Julie and Buddy Miller and their circle of friends.
The Millers moved to Nashville in 1993 and have since each released a pair of critically acclaimed albums: "Your Love & Other Lies" and "Poison Love" by Buddy Miller and Julie Miller's "Blue Pony" and now "Broken Things." They aren't exactly solo albums, because both Millers co-write songs and sing, and Buddy Miller recorded all of them in their home studio. In addition, a loose group of Nashville's most adventurous souls, including Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris, regularly appears on the Millers' records.
But they don't fit into the neat pigeonholes. Because they're married, it'd be convenient if they were the new king and queen of country music, but you could look long and hard and never find a rhinestone or a cowboy hat between them. Just as with their friends, country music best describes the point of departure and not the whole journey. Yes, mandolins chime and Buddy Miller's guitar rumbles and twangs as befits a man who just won a Nashville Music Award as that town's best guitarist. And songs such as the rearranged traditional lament, "Two Soldiers," wouldn't sound at all out of place on a Ralph Stanley album.
But George and Tammy -- never mind Ralph -- never began a love song with the lines that Julie Miller sings in "I Need You":
"I need something like morphine only better
I need something like a kiss that lasts forever
I need something like money that will not
burn..."
Miller sings in that unworldly, wispy voice of hers over the industrial clatter and thrum of Buddy Miller (triple-tracked on bass, vocals and guitar) and drummer Brady Blades, who plays with Buddy Miller in Spyboy, Emmylou's backing band.
The connection is a valid one, because the Millers' willingness to tweak textures and arrangements recalls the genre-expanding sound of Emmylou's "Wrecking Ball." Not that anybody is copying anybody else; more that we're blessed with an interwoven artistic circle aiming to create new and compelling music from traditional forms.
Listen, for example, to the exotically modal "Orphan Train," which includes bouzouki, bowed bass and hurdy-gurdy in the mix -- hardly standard accompaniment in a Nashville studio but stunningly effective for all that. Or because of it. But Miller can grab your ears with just her words and voice, as she does on the achingly beautiful title track ("you can have my heart if you don't mind broken things/ you can have my life if you don't mind these tears . . . ") and "All My Tears," a duet with Patty Griffin that is as understated as a muffled sob.
In the end, "Broken Things" is the best of news. Far from being broken, it's proof that a new creative nexus is alive and growing at the heart of American music. Whether the next album comes from Buddy or Julie or Steve or Jim Lauderdale or Emmylou, there's every hope that it'll be a continuation of what's looking like a long winning streak.
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Lexington Herald-Leader
By Walter Tunis
It was the biggest musical surprise of 1997. Here was Julie Miller, a proven Texas songstress issuing her first recording outside of what had largely been a contemporary Christian market. The album was Blue Pony -- a gorgeous, ghostly set of genre-defying songs that came in at No. 2 on my Top 10 album list for that year.
The 12 tunes on Broken Things continue to blur country and folk, electric and acoustic, darkness and light and -- in headier moments -- the romantic and the spiritual.
Her partner on this wild musical mix is husband Buddy Miller, whose guitar colorings are graceful foils to her often otherworldly songs.
The album-opening Ride the Wind to Me beautifully sums up the Millers' musical gifts. It's a thoroughly unsentimental saga of faith and love in the face of smashed dreams, led by Julie Miller's haunted whisper of a voice. But circling above the story is a breeze of Appalachian acoustics and Byrds-flavored electric melodies.
On the lighter side is a pair of wonderful, worldly ballads -- I Know Why the River Runs (with Buddy Miller on harmony vocals) and I Still Cry Out (sung with Patty Griffin) -- that exhibit a vulnerable clarity in their sense of quiet.
Two of the Millers' famed former employers also lend a hand on Broken Things. Emmylou Harris teams with Julie Miller to create some luscious antique harmonies on a cover of Two Soldiers. Then Steve Earle takes her for a swampy walk on the wild side with Strange Lover.
If you know Blue Pony, then rest assured that Broken Things is an equally unexpected and adventurous journey. If you don't, pick up both albums. They serve as two glorious chapters by one of the most unjustly overlooked female artists in contemporary music.
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Frank's Picks
I first saw Julie Miller when she opened up for Steve Earle with her husband and musical partner Buddy Miller, who lays edgy guitar riffs and sparkling power lines under her songs. People were telling me that the opening act was as good as the big star - and this prediction proved quite accurate. Julie and Buddy Miller are performers and songwriters who have yet to reach the full pinnacle of success and they are far short of recognition and name awareness. If you are a fan of Americana, folk or alternative-country and her name does not ring a bell, be assured that it will ( and should!). Julie Miller’s claim to fame so far has been as songwriter of "All My Tears" as recorded by Emmilou Harris, who made a big hit with it on her critically acclaimed CD "Wrecking Ball". Miller’s undeniable destiny is to be of equal stature as Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin.
The Miller’s are smart. Both have separate recording contracts. Buddy plays on all of Julie’s records. Julie plays on all of Buddy’s. Nobody gets short-changed or plays second fiddle. Their sound is typically American. Nobody else makes music like this and no other definition is better. "Broken Things" carries on Julie’s amalgam of rock, folk and country elements. Julie rocks hard enough to frighten the squeamish folk- purists; yet, she sings distinctly cool songs with heavy leanings to post-modern ,contemporary folk. On one song she’s gentle, sweet and emotive, on the next she’s explicitly overt and brash like a young rebel rock-n-roller. This singer is seductively sensuous and seemingly innocent, contemplative and insightful, riding the time-proven intrinsic conflict between the sacred and the sin, the righteous and the forbidden. Julie Miller has deep country roots and she twangs definitively and unabashedly enough to alienate rock snobs. Yet, she’ll hold herself tall against the toughest modern rockers so you don’t ever confuse her with a Nashville country singer. Ironically, while Julie Miller’s music is saturated in real rock-n-roll and just about whatever else you want to point to, at heart that’s exactly what she is- a "real" country singer. The boundary lines may get blurred, but never the groove- tight, with a strong beat and a dynamic sense of melodicism and old-time mountain harmonies. This is pure "Americana" at it’s finest.
Julie Miller plays acoustic guitar and sings. All 12 songs are her original compositions, each attesting to her amazing songwriting skills- songs with drama and beauty, ballads of heartache, tragedy and joy, triumph and loss. While this CD is packed with great songs , her version of "All My Tears" alone is worth the record. Steve Earle plays mandolin on that song, which will take it’s place as one of the new classics of American popular culture. "All My Tears" is a distinctly religious folk song, reminiscent of white-gospel mountain music; but, with a rocky edge and a country twist, with such simplicity and sheer power that it will grab you right by the bass string of your music soul:
When I go don’t cry for me
In my father’s arms I’ll be
The wounds this world left on my soul
Will all be healed and I’ll be whole.
Sun and moon will be replaced
With the light of Jesus face
And I will not be ashamed
For my savior knows my name.
And as she sings this, all your fears and worries will fade. There are other supreme songs here, like "Maggie" and "Two-Soldiers" with Emmilou Harris. Particularly pleasant is the mandolin and bouzouki playing of Larry Campbell. Indeed, it’s all just fine, hurdy-gurdies, accordions and all. Hurrah for Julie Miller. Make this kid a star, quick.
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SoundStage
by Marc Rigrodsky
Musical Performance: 5 of 5
Recording Quality: 3.5 of 5
Overall Enjoyment:4.5 of 5
To the extent it even deals with real emotion, contemporary music usually sticks with what’s raw: angst, lust, and hate. This is no fluke. Most folks simply don’t have the time or patience in their hyper-cyber worlds for subtlety, shading, and context. Look at politics. Where we once had Jefferson and Hamilton, Lincoln and Douglas, in all their written and oral majesty, we now have sound bites of Al Gore and George W. Bush. Whatever it is -- politics, food, music, comedy --give it to us short, straight, fast, and loud, and make sure it’s rude enough to grab the ever-diminishing, much-competed-for national attention span.
All of which makes artists like Julie Miller a pleasure to listen to. Her new album, Broken Things, is a mixture of competing and complex emotional concerns sung with conviction and covering a range of musical styles. Co-produced with husband Buddy Miller, and joined in by many Austin-Nashville regulars like Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and Victoria Williams, Broken Things takes on the good and bad of life and love. Miller’s songs, all of which she wrote except for the Civil War ballad "Two Soldiers," are direct, her metaphors (rain, wind, fire) simple for the most part. They grab the hand and heart, but not the jugular.
Miller addresses contradictory romantic themes throughout the record. In "Ride the Wind to Me," the first song on the album, she sings of the emotional resurrection awaiting her lover, while on "I Know Why the River Runs," the second song, she laments his lack of interest. "I Need You" is a warm plea for someone to be "here with me in my head," but "I Still Cry" and "Out in the Rain," with their images of falling leaves and "rain just coming down now wild and uncontrolled" convey the sadness of when that person isn’t there or, worse yet, has left. Still, she does not attempt to reconcile these aspects of love, but rather notes on the concluding track, "The Speed of Light," that "time and space are relative…the only thing that doesn’t change/makes everything change/is the speed of light/your love for me must be the speed of light." Love as relativity, both mysteries to the human mind.
Miller is consistent, however, regarding her faith. Both "Orphan Train" and "All My Tears" show absolute conviction in the Big Man without preaching or proselytizing, and when she sings in "Broken Things" that "you can have my heart/if you don’t mind broken things," she seems to have more than secular concerns in mind.
Musically, the record is a sturdy exercise in the folk/rock/blues/country of Austin and the more progressive elements of Nashville. The musicians, led by Buddy Miller on guitar and a number of other instruments, are professional and tight without being slick. Then there’s Miller’s voice. As a general rule, she sounds like Sam Phillips after smoking a pack of Pall Malls. But the roughness and thinness of her voice are what make it endearing; her constant struggle to keep her scratchy voice on key and in tune (which she always wins) conveys a sense of genuineness that singers with better sets of pipes usually ignore or take for granted. She is also a good enough vocalist to sound sweet and ethereal one moment and dark and unbalanced the next. These vocal contrasts highlight the contradictory nature of her songs.
The recording quality is somewhat uneven, which is not surprising because at least four different people beside Julie and Buddy Miller were responsible for "additional recording." The guitars chime and the drums whack crisply on most songs, yet on a few, the entire mix sounds as if it is buried in mud. Still, Julie Miller’s voice and lyrics are front and center on every song, where they belong.
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