Miss Autopsy is singer/guitarist Steve Beyerink and whoever else he can find to play with him, oftentimes nobody. He began playing shows and releasing albums in 2003, when "Ruhr", his debut of a few years' worth of home recordings, came out. He played a few scattered shows over the next two years, performing solo while a drum machine ran percussion loops through the PA. His first proper studio album was 2005's Sweet Killers. Jarring loud guitar/drum machine songs were sequenced right alongside minimal, quiet ones. After the recording sessions for The Hill, which was tracked in December 2006 but not released until the summer of 2008, he relocated to Chicago from his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. On The Hill, the loud guitars are mostly abandoned for a clearer version of dark pop, and synths are used in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
"Odd this. Because at first, with a name like Miss Autopsy catching your eye, titles like ‘Last Night I Killed A Man’ on the tracklisting, and lyrics like “If I had a knife, I’d cut a hole and reach in my chest, it’s a tempting way to die” on the inlay, it’s easy to imagine this sounding nasty, sounding terrifying even. Hit play though and it’s a subtle stillness, soft synth lines, and whispered vocals that surface, there is no musical violence to be found. Ahh, but then, just when you let your guard down, Miss Autopsy turns out to be everything that it at first appeared.
Oh sure, quiet is one of the most important things here, hell, some of the sounds won’t even register if you’ve been stingy with your speaker set up, but the man behind the music- Steve Beyerink- wants to create “records that make the hair on listeners’ arms stand up” and damn how he does that here. The stillness of opener ‘The Doctor’ isn’t shattered in any way but gives in to ‘Princess’ where pop dynamics distort, vocals hiss, and the drum beat refuses to settle, poking incessantly at whatever part of your inner ear is responsible for making you feel off-balance and queasy.
The whole record prods and pinches like that too. ‘Telephone Song’ might be the loudest of the bunch but that doesn’t stop it sneaking up on you and screaming straight into your fight-or-flight synapses, ‘Let The Bodies Lie’ uses a skeletal piano riff to make your skin crawl, the title track sounds like it’s been cut-and-pasted out of some forgotten Western and warped into a belle-laide new shape, and there is talk of deadly addictions, wasted love and “disease spreading whores” throughout. It’s no surprise then that The Paperchase mainman John Congleton is involved here- sat in the producer’s chair, lending Beyerink his drummer for a few tracks, and no doubt jamming on the creepy vibes that his own band so wonderfully specialise in.
So you might not want to hit repeat on ‘The Hill’ too many times- take too much of this in and you’ll wind up walking the streets forever wondering why nothing ever looks quite right- but an occasional eerie dip in will keep you on your toes and swiftly reassure that there is some pure emotion remaining in indie rock. Remarkable." new-noise.net review of The Hill
"Steve Beyerink is Miss Autopsy. But this does not have the feel of the stereotypical one-man outfit. The sound is ragged, loose and really, really dirty. Though I guess I am repeating myself. Slinky hard rock riffs abound, but Beyerink thinks nothing of sliding into a midwestern americana groove when the feeling strikes--and that's good stuff, too. The construction and simple riffage is the same, but he adds a mellow twang here and there that's comforting to an old Missouri boy like me. A Missouri boy who was born in New York, but then, aren't we all a collection of contradictions? Beyerink certainly is. This album whipsaws from loud and nasty to frighteningly introspective at the drop of a ten-gallon hat. Surprisingly, it manages to hold together just fine. Probably more a result of Beyerink's almost militaristic guitar style rather than his voice, but when you've got John Congleton at the knobs, you've always got a fighting chance. Thoroughly enjoyable. Though I must admit to being wrong about one thing: The idiosyncrasy present on this album clearly marks it as a one-man job. But hey, that's cool with me. I always like stripping away the layers of someone else's personality. Keeps me from worrying too much about mine." -- Aiding and Abetting review of Sweet Killers
