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Louise Burns: A teen popster would never wear this headdress. (MICHELLE FORD)

There was a time not so long ago when Vancouver singer/songwriter Louise Burns was best known as the shy, fresh-faced bassist in the Juno-nominated all-girl power pop outfit Lillix.
   
That’s all changing, though, thanks to Burns’ star-making solo debut, Mellow Drama. Released in April via Light Organ Records to rave reviews, the album is a shimmering collection of warm, sunshine-soaked shoegaze/surf rock confections, replete with girl-group harmonies and old-school pop arrangements. As far as this music critic is concerned, it’s a near-perfect record and a stellar (re)introduction to one of Canada’s brightest rising stars — and I’m not the only one who thinks so; Mellow Drama was recently longlisted for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize. (That’s part of the reason we put Louise on the cover a week early; we thought it would be a shame if she was eclipsed by the Winnipeg Folk Festival.)
   
For Burns, the fact that people are listening to the album — and liking what they hear — is still a novelty.
   
"Oh, it’s so weird," she says with a laugh over the phone from a hotel in Edmonton, fresh off a pair of gigs at Calgary’s Sled Island Festival. "I don’t even have a concept. It took me so long to get to this point, the fact people like it is really re-affirming. It’s nice that people are giving it a chance despite my background. I’m really happy."
   
Indeed, the stripped-down, less-is-more Mellow Drama is nothing like the hyper-produced, polished-to-a-blinding-sheen bubblegum pop that Lillix was making back when Burns, now 25, was a teenage member — although Lillix didn’t start out that way. When Louise co-founded the group at age 11 (!) in Cranbrook, B.C., it was a plucky basement band whose members wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. And they were a talented bunch; when Burns was just 15, Lillix was scooped up by major label Maverick Records and transformed into a corporate money-making machine for which a marketable image was paramount.
   
Contrast that experience with the making of Mellow Drama, which, as Louise puts it, "just felt right." Recorded over a year with veteran producer Dave Ogilvie (Skinny Puppy, Jakalope, Doughboys) and up-and-comer Kevin James Maher (Jakalope, Fake Shark — Real Zombie), the album was a true labour of love.
   
"I felt really good about it," Burns says. "I picked my producers because I liked their work. I knew exactly what I wanted, right down to the drum sounds. It was nice, especially compared to Lillix, where there was a lot of pressure. It was all about, ‘Make a single! Make the label happy!’ This just felt right. There was a lot less pressure. The label never came by unless it was to say hi. There were no A&R guys making vapid, bullshit comments about the single they didn’t hear. I didn’t need to worry about impressing anyone but myself, which was new for me."
   
Still, Burns could be her own worst critic. Her major-label experiences with Lillix had turned her off pop music — so, when she left the band at age 20, she was feeling conflicted. She tried shucking her former image as a teen pop star by playing experimental rock in the vein of Velvet Underground but, no matter how much she buried it under layers of weirdo noise, the music she was making was undeniably pop.
   
It took a few years of soul-searching for her to realize that pop didn’t have to be a dirty word. It also took a few years — and more than a few demos — to convince her that she was ready to embark on a solo career.
   
"I’d been writing forever — but I think it was 2008 when I really started to focus," she says. "Over a two-year process, I demoed everything. I had so many demos — probably 30 or more. But there was a lot of mediocrity. They weren’t 30 amazing songs. Some were just ideas I thought I should document."
   
Burns knew what quality she was looking for in those demos.   
   
"I wanted to make a record of songs, if that makes sense," she says. "I wanted 12 songs that people would listen to — I wasn’t focused on a particular genre or sound; I wanted it to be simple and not have the production take away from the writing. I played all the instruments myself to keep it at that level — plus, I had very specific ideas, so it was easier for me to just play them."
   
For inspiration, Burns mined an era of music that embodied her back-to-basics, it’s-all-about-the-songs ethos.
   
"I was very influenced by ’50s, ’60s and ’70s recordings," she says, noting that, for this album, she was particularly influenced by Neil Young, Sam Cooke, Harry Nilsson, The Beach Boys and girl groups. "Those recordings had that simplicity; everything is there to serve the song. There’s not a lot of intention outside of that. It’s just about the core of the song."
   
While Mellow Drama certainly has a vintage pop glow about it, it stops well short of being kitschy. Strip away the (minimal) production and you’re left with dark, dreamy songs about growing up and sorting shit out, the kind that would sound just as good carried only by an acoustic guitar and Burns’ indelible voice.
   
"All my favourite songwriters say the same thing," she says when I suggest that to her. "All these songs were written on acoustic guitar. There’s no bullshit on top. That’s the world I come from — ear candy. Garbage strewn on top of a song to make it somehow more palatable for the listener."
   
It helps, of course, that Burns knows how to write a song. Mellow Drama has a honest, confessional quality about it; listening to it is like stumbling across someone’s (incredibly relatable) diary. And Louise’s performances come straight from the heart; she absolutely owns her gothic folk take on Leonard Cohen’s The Gypsy’s Wife.
   
"I saw Leonard Cohen play in Vancouver with my mom in 2009 and I had never heard that song before," she says. "I became obsessed with it. People may think it’s blasphemous to cover Leonard Cohen, but it’s an homage from a fan."
   
Like so much of Mellow Drama, Louise says the Cohen cover simply "felt right," a phrase she repeats throughout our interview. After years of making music that felt wrong, Burns is finally trusting her gut — and the rewards just keep coming.
   
"I thought people would roll their eyes at me," she says. "It was pretty hard convincing myself to (make a solo record). But I’m so glad I did it. I’m really happy. I’m touring, I’m making music — life couldn’t be better."
 

July 8, Rock Bar
w/ Sun Wizard