HOWLIN RAIN - Mansion Songs LP

Mansion Songs proved to be a pivotal album, especially because it sounds like Miller’s cleanest break from the crunch and grind of his former outfit Comets on Fire.

He’s in full classic-rock mode here, summoning the ghosts of the Fillmore West on these eight songs.

It’s not an album about the industry, and that is certainly to Miller’s credit; self-pity and bitterness are tedious topics for rock songs. Instead, this may be closer to a junkie record. "Big Red Moon" opens in the "ghetto alleys and skid row bars" of the Mission District, where Miller romanticizes the culture of addiction with lines like "Tonight we’ll be kinsmen to the stars."

Later he admits, "There’s slime running in my veins, mold on the walls of my heart."