Howls from the Bay Area

In 2006 the legendary Comets on Fire issued their swansong Avatar, a supreme expression of the journey they had made from the breakneck punk speed noise of their self-titled debut on Alternative Tentacles, to the Julian Cope-endorsed (here!)grandeur of Blue Cathedral on Sub Pop.

At the same time, like a cosmic planetary alignment, Comets main dude Ethan Miller birthed the self-titled debut of a new venture, the pared-down three-piece Howlin Rain, on Birdman.  This mystical celestial event cast a scintillant ray from the heavens and straight into El Duderino's third eye, like BOOM, one doors closes and the universe opens. Where Comets had reached a kind of jazz epiphany where their frantic mantric clangor got doglocked with ecstatic expressions of a canonical rock excelsis, Howlin Rain offered an altogether more rootsy take on the same terrain - these apes were looking at the same mountain top, just out of the jungle rather than the slopes.

Halfway through Calling Lightning with a Scythe, Miller cuts loose from the rustic banjo stylings with a guitar solo so primal and overclocked that it threatens to untether from this plane entirely and spark another big bang for a new universe, and in an adjacent reality that is happening right now, praise be.  Frozen in a rictus of delirious joy as this Ur-solo unfolded, you knew that Ethan Miller had reached that mountaintop and just carried on climbing.

Each further Howlin Rain release seemed to compound this sense of manifest destiny, as Miller forever reconstituted his band of travellers on each record.  Magnificent Fiend, on Birdman and American, expanded the lineup to a five-piece, the record characterised by the churning Hammond of Joel Robinow.  The Russian Wilds swapped some personnel (including the addition of formidable guitar hero Isaiah Mitchell, of Earthless fame) but was a long strange trip due to the involvement of Rick Rubin, and seemed to almost burn our hero out.  After a live LP from the Russian Wilds tour, the relatively dolorous Mansion Songs was the last Howlin Rain release, and it's telling that the band for this album became the line-up of another Miller splinter group Heron Oblivion, in which he plays the bass for a change.

Moody though the record was, you wouldn't have known if from the ecstatic racket Miller and his touring band cooked up, and it's this touring line-up that have recorded the next chapter in the skybound arc of Howlin Rain, The Alligator Bride.  The lead single is redolent of Crazy Horse rock classicism and Miller's idiosyncratic lyrical pungency. 

Check out Miller's label website for the writings of the man himself and all things Howlin Rain.  This dude epitomises the spirit and excitement of grassroots, underground DIY music making, and from his eyrie in Oakland he's planning another headfirst lunge into the sun, so dip your feathers in hot wax and follow him upwards.