** Chris Mills

EVERY NIGHT FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE

(Sugar Free)

Set martyrdom to music and it's been known to pay the rent. If Chris Mills has his druthers, you'll come away from this disc thinking he learned that the hard way. Aches and pains are the take-home message he packs into Every Night, his quivering sophomore follow-up to (yes, really) Nobody's Favorite. Subtle the man is not. Mills laces his Uncle Tupelo-esque tracks with Gen-anXiety and pours on the echoey reverb -- you can practically see the girls wringing their hands in the first row. Yet his voice is just gravelly enough to be interesting: it sounds best on the disc's more uptempo tracks and when Edith Frost (Drag City) joins him to lay down the lovely and straightforward duet "Sawtooth." Too bad the track collapses into a pathetic "chopsticks" ending picked out on the piano. Mills pulls off lines like "I've got a fresh young mouth/Just wish that I could shut it," with charming aplomb. That song, "Fresh Young Mouth," makes sense on both counts: if he could only curtail his tendency to wallow in self-pity, he might have better luck singing for his supper.

-- Katherine Brown