Guys like Ethan Miller have badass beards that make me want to inject hormones to boost my own bum fluff. Guys like Ethan Miller don’t get down when they have no record label or when the group that they’ve been playing with for years — in the case of Miller, under the Howlin Rain moniker — has dispersed. No, when times get tough for guys like Ethan Miller, they wake up the next day, pour some whiskey on their Corn Flakes, and get on with things by turning the dark times into art. I wish I was Ethan Miller.
All of which is a roundabout way to say that the latest incarnation of Howlin Rain have a new album called Mansion Songs coming out January 27 via Easy Sound Records. After rising out of the ashes of Comets on Fire and a nine-year run of amazing fortune and killer tunes, Howlin Rain had seemingly ran the end of some sort of course, and instead of putting the band behind him, Ethan Miller has pressed on with a record that ropes in a revolving cast of musicians, raising all sorts of down-home hell around Miller’s glorious creations.
Apparently, Mansion Songs is the first in a trilogy of records Miller laid down during the aforementioned “dark times,” and by the strength of the lead single “Big Red Moon,” we’re all set to benefit from Miller’s depths of depression.
Mansion Songs
01. Big Red Moon
02. Meet Me In The Wheat
03. Coliseum
04. The New Age
05. Wild Bush
06. Restless
07. Lucy Fairchild
08. Ceiling Fan
• Howlin Rain: http://www.howlinrain.com
• Easy Sound Records: http://www.easysoundrecordingcompany.com