Milla made her first foray into the music world with her 1994 hit “Gentleman Who Fell,” a pop oddity that snuck its way onto mod-rock radio stations and a handful of daring Top 40 stations. It was the kind of song that spoke to the Angela Chases of the world (“I don’t know how to speak to you/I don’t know how to trust you” goes the chorus); in fact, the song is still being used as a symbol of young female angst to this day (it most recently made a cameo in 2002’s The Rules of Attraction). The single, a video for which was originally directed by Lisa Bonet but ultimately scrapped for a more avant-garde clip inspired by Maya Deren’s 1943 short film Meshes of the Afternoon, unfortunately failed to crack the pop charts, but Milla’s music—a cross between the loony mysticism of Kate Bush and the more grounded, earthy witchery of Stevie Nicks—still sounds surprisingly fresh a decade later.
Milla displays more vocal range throughout The Divine Comedy than one might expect from a Revlon haircolor spokesperson: Her voice reaches from reedy, girlish, and coy to hearty and rich, often all in one line. Her lyrics also have surprising depth, from “Reaching From Nowhere” (“What if we decide to break these walls?/This, from me the builder”) to “It’s Your Life,” in which she attempts to negotiate a love triangle of some kind (romantic or otherwise). And for anyone who’s ever wondered what our world might look like through the eyes of a foreigner (read: space alien), Milla offers “The Alien Song (For Those Who Listen),” an early snippet of which she performed in—get this—Richard Linklater’s 1993 cult film Dazed and Confused. “Clock” tells the more sober tale of a girl (a la Anne Frank) who is hidden away from the “great murderer, great Aryan,” while the downright giddy “You Did It All Before” juxtaposes a spritely arrangement of penny whistle, ukulele, and crisscrossing vocal parts with the bloody anguish of Milla’s words: “The ground is still too red/From the wickedness you did.” From: https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/milla-the-divine-comedy/
