Dark and Twisty: Amy Millan

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NO MATTER HOW beautifully Amy Millan sings, she can't stop anyone from dying.

When the dark-haired, tentative-voiced Toronto singer isn't onstage as a member of indie icons Broken Social Scene, pop-rockers Stars or with her own band, she thinks about hard subjects.

"What I wrestle with is that everyone I love is going to die," said Millan. "I don't really need to be breaking up with people in order to find this sad undercurrent to life. It's a static energy that's constantly surrounding me, the idea that we'll die."

The fretting started after losing her father in a car accident, and the musician remains haunted.

"I feel for the state of the human condition," said Millan. "We're all flopping around, trying to ... do all the things that are 'normal,' but we all know that people get sick and accidents happen and these terrible things happen and in order to continue every day with hope, we have to repress so many things that are horrifying."

Those reflections add darkness to the wistful folk songs created by Millan on her cover-heavy second solo album. "Masters of the Burial," full of songs about losing the idea of home, and featuring a rendering of Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark."

"It's my job to pull people out," said Millan, who appears at DC9 on Sunday with her own band. "That's what I'm here for, and that's the only reason."

Throughout her career, Millan has drawn support from her close-knit musical family. She just came off a recent recording session with BSS and is preparing for a 2010 fall release for a new Stars album.

"I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet to have such a great group of friends," said Millan. "It's not that they don't suck some of the time. ... But it's being able to forgive each other for the really [expletive] things we've done to each other."
And how does Millan repress the darker truths of life? "Wine, wine, wine and love," said Millan. "But love is really what helps us get through those things."

» DC9, 1940 9th St. NW; Sun., with Bahamas, 9 p.m., $14; 202- 483-5000, dcnine.com. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express' Nathan Martin
Photo by Norman Wong