Sally Crewe, Chris Mills and the Distant Stars, Doug Gillard (special solo acoustic set)

Sally Crewe plays pop music for people who think they don’t have any use for pop music.

If you’re already OK with a great melodic hook and sharp, spunky guitar work, then Sally Crewe is just what you’re looking for. But if you think pop music in the 21st Century either means teen-centric auto-tuned confections that make an adult’s fillings ache or the stuff of aging cultists with Rickenbackers and too many Flamin’ Groovies bootlegs, Sally Crewe is an artist you need in your life. Crewe plays simple, strong, but wiry rock ‘n’ roll that you can hum (or dance) along with without feeling foolish, and when she sings about relationships, work, the state of the world, and the other details of a lived life, you can be over the age of the average Taylor Swift fan and feel like you fit right in. And she makes it all sound like cool, edgy fun.

Sally Crewe has been playing her brand of lean, clever music — the kind that rests comfortably at the point on the Venn Diagram where first wave punk and smart, sharp pop meet – since making her debut with the splendid Drive It Like You Stole It in 2003. But Crewe hasn’t been resting on her laurels (or her enthusiastic reviews), and her fourth album, Later Than You Think, is her most ambitious and forward thinking work to date, ten songs that capture what Crewe does best while shaking up her formula as a songwriter and a performer.

Produced by Crewe in collaboration with George Duron (who also plays drums on the sessions) and Louie Lino (engineer and operator of Austin’s Resonate Studios), Later Than You Think is the product of an artist who set out to challenge herself to make an album that stood out from her critically acclaimed body of work. “I wanted to make the best record I’ve ever made, and to do that it had to be a closer reflection of the songs I hear in my head,” Crewe said. “Sometimes I wake up with a section of music in my head, and it takes me a few hours to convince myself I wrote it and didn’t hear it somewhere. Then the job of getting it to sound as close as possible to what I hear begins. And that’s the part I’m getting better at. Every record gets closer to that, and this is the closest so far.”

Judging from the finished product, those sounds in Crewe’s head are pretty great. Later Than You Think is full of memorable songs, built around no-frills melodies and hooks that will stay with you after the tunes are over, but Crewe has also upped her game as a guitarist, delivering memorable guitar solos on numbers like “Chase Tornado,” “Only Luck Can Save Us Now,” and the title cut, while overlaying guitar tracks to give the songs the muscle and backbone they need.

Though the album is for-real rock ‘n’ roll, “Satellite” finds Crewe experimenting with drum loops for the first time, as well as adding additional colors with organs, synthesizers, and mallet percussion. And with the help of drummer Duron and bassist Matt Baab, the performances run the gamut from the slyly funky “Look Back Down” and the inventive pop of “Needle in the Groove” to the rock ‘n’ roll swagger of “What You Do,” and they all sound bracing and confident from first cut to last.

As a singer and lyricist, Sally Crewe goes from strength to strength on Later Than You Think. Crewe’s voice recalls your good friend who is sweet at heart but nobody’s fool, and not hesitant to point out when you’ve screwed up (or sometimes when she’s done the same). And her lyrical outlook fits like a glove as she ponders romance gone seriously wrong (“Satellite”), the ups and downs of working for a living (“Only Luck Can Save Us Now”), the delicate balance of life in the modern world (“The Payback”), and the endless struggle of keeping your dogs happy (“What You Do”).

“The album seems to have a general theme of loss and renewal,” Crewe says. “So ’Later Than You Think’ made sense as the title track. It refers to the state of the planet, as well as a reminder to seize the day and stop procrastinating.” If Crewe would like her listeners to step up and take action, that’s very much what she’s done with this album. Later Than You Think proves there’s still room for pop music that’s smart, inventive, and ambitious … and a kick to hear at the same time.

Sally Crewe has made one of 2015?s great grown-up rock ‘n’ roll albums, and you owe it to yourself to investigate it while the time is right.


[Mills'] hidden elegance lies in the twist of lovesick metaphor, the wistful chord, the revisionist take on the slamming door. – NME

It’s been 17 years since Chris Mills released his first EP, “Chris Mills Plays And Sings.” That record’s plainspoken title laid out the disarmingly simple tone for his career; the development of his craft since then has resulted in sharper songwriting, more musical ornamentation, and tours with the likes of Andrew Bird and Califone. Now, with ALEXANDRIA, Mills has increased his band’s numbers (bass player Ryan Hembrey, pianist Christer Knutsen, and drummer Konrad Meissener) and geographic scope—the Brooklyn-based troubadour’s sixth studio album was largely conceived in Scandinavia, and recorded at Chicago’s Wall To Wall Studios. (Grammy-winning engineer Ryan Freeland mixed the album.) At once intensely personal and incredibly ambitious, ALEXANDRIA is a leap forward for Mills, yet it retains the wit and keen eye for human behavior that have defined his records up to this point.

The seeds for this record, Mills’s first since 2008?s LIVING IN THE AFTERMATH, were sown by his own maturing. “There was a lot of personal upheaval and renewal going on throughout the entire writing process,” Mills recalls. “I got married; I went through some rough times and pulled myself out of them. I began to refocus on how I thought about music and art, and playing and recording. This album looks backwards and forwards at the same time.”

As such, the characters populating Mills’s have weathered life’s storms, but are by no means swept away by their tumult; instead, they look for salvation in the world around them. The loneliness precisely described on “The Sweet Hereafter” is tempered by the knowledge that there’s “magic in the mountains,” while “Castaways”—a sea shanty turned rave-up—looks for redemption in the water.

“I spent a lot of time in Scandanavia when I was writing the songs and when Christer, Ryan and I were working on the demos, and I definitely feel like that informed some of the tracks. I feel like there’s a bit of desolation in a lot of the lyrics, and a sort of ‘no man’s land’ vibe, which reflects where we were at times in the Norwegian countryside. There’s a stillness at night when you get into the mountains over there, or above the Arctic Circle, and a little loneliness that I think crept into some of the songs.”

Mills’s newest collaborator, who hails from Norway, is also a part of his history—although he didn’t realize it until they met. One night in 2009, Mills and Hembry were out in a remote town three hours south of Oslo when they heard music coming from a bar. “The band was good,” Mills recalls, “though what struck me most was this lanky piano and lap steel player over in the corner. He was amazing!”

That player was Knutsen, who—in a stroke of luck—turned out to be a longtime fan of Mills’s music, and the ideal collaborator for a a record where Mills wanted to continue his musical development while remaining true to his roots. Mills, Hembry, and Knutsen collaborated across the Atlantic, sending demos back and forth and working on music together whenever they happened to be on the same soil. But the stop-start nature proved frustrating, and so Knutsen and Mills flew out to Chicago with Meissener, and laid down the record in a few days at Mills’s old haunt Wall To Wall Studios.

“Christer has a better handle on many of the things I’ve done than I do,” Mills notes. “And he was uncompromising in his efforts to make this record something that we could both be proud of. He knew when I was getting lazy and just doing something out of habit, or when I was missing something that was key in some of my earlier work. He also pushed me to try new things, but because he was so versed in the context of my other work, it always felt like progression or refinement.”

Take the buoyant “Helpless Bells,” which splits the difference between New Wave (darting synths underscore the jangling guitars) and New Americana and which is a particular testament to the way Knutsen helped deepen Mills’s sound. The harmonies are straight out of a barn-raising, yet the song is flung into the current pop moment by the subtle keyboards humming underneath.

“We’re both pop fiends, even though we both tend to write on the earthier end of the spectrum. He has an amazing ear for harmonies,” Mills recalls. “We also wanted to keep the few ‘rootsy’ tunes on the record from feeling too trad, so we added the harmonies and some space keyboards to keep things interesting and sort of otherworldly.”

ALEXANDRIA’s opening track “Wild Places” opens with Mills singing, simply, “I have wandered in the wild places/ and I’ve brought a message back for you”; that sentiment sets the tone for this expansive, exploratory album, which is full of heartfelt words set to indelible melodies.


Doug Gillard is a guitarist and songwriter who has performed with bands and artists such as Guided by Voices, Nada Surf, Richard Buckner, Death Of Samantha, Gem, Cobra Verde, Children's Crusade, Starvation Army, My Dad is Dead, The Mice, Bill Fox, Sally Crewe, Mascott, Anders and Kendall, Gramercy Arms, The Oranges Band, and as a solo artist.

Last year he released the album "Parade On" (Nine Mile Records) to great reviews. Gillard has also scored several independent films, including American Cannibal. Gillard presently lives in New York and is a member of Nada Surf.