Blake Mills started working with the jazz musician Chris Weisman on the soundtrack for the Amazon Original series Daisy Jones & the Six. Their assignment was a weird one—make a fake Laurel Canyon album for a fictional band—but it seems to have struck up a rewarding creative partnership, which pays off on “Skeleton Is Walking,” the first song from Mills’ upcoming solo record, Jelly Road.
Mills co-wrote the album with Weisman, and the two virtuosos work up a rumpled groove, the guitars falling ever-so-slightly out of phase with each other while the drums drift around an uncertain rhythmic center. It was likely the result of painstaking rehearsal, but it feels like a jam session in the back of a crowded pub. Mills’ small voice offers dreamy musings that float like torn journal scraps: someone’s building a fire, someone’s getting flayed. The song seems to be coming over a hill, forever about to come into focus, until a guitar solo like heat lightning sends it scuttling back away, just out of reach.
