indy cd & vinyl

HOWLIN RAIN—MAGNIFICENT FIEND

Ethan Miller is apparently an inspired musical polymath. Miller is lead guitarist and frontman for Comets On Fire, one of the prime movers in the neo-psychedelic movement within indie rock. His feedback-laced, guitar-driven excursions for that group are rightly championed as examples of how to build on an established form (the psychedelic movement of the sixties/seventies) without sounding derivative. Amazingly, Miller is also able to pull off this same trick with his other band, Howlin Rain. In this case, however, the root of his musical inspiration lies in the blues-rock template of the late sixties/early seventies. Drawing on traditions established by a long list of Englishmen (Rod Stewart before his glam phase, Joe Cocker, and particularly Clapton/Derek and the Dominoes), Miller takes this blues-rock bed and layers it with tasty helpings of southern-rock and jam-band formulations (possibly inspired by his growing up in Humboldt County CA). Somehow, it all works a treat. This is largely due to the bands ability to keep the songs short and sweet. Miller’s raspy blues voice (strongly recalling Rod Stewart), lays into catchy, riff-driven songs, most of which are punctuated with concise, bluesy solos a la Clapton or even the Allmans’ Dickey Betts. Little evidence of psychedelia is found anywhere here (although the last song does end with a feedback drone).  The album opener, “Requiem,” takes off from a riff-heavy Hammond B-3 (used to great effect throughout the album) and combines its sound with stinging blues lines. Second song “Dancers At The End Of Time” finds Miller using his shouty blues voice to great effect, while many of the subsequent songs sound like they could be excellent Derek and the Dominoes outtakes, with their clean, occasionally twin guitar leads and vocal pleas to “Have mercy on my soul”.  The production is appropriately clean yet with some fuzz still attached. Who knew that this psychedelic wunderkind could also put out one best blue-rock recordings in recent memory? Indie-rockers may sleep on it, but for those with a hankering for Clapton, Stewart, or the Allmans in their prime, this will do very nicely.