Ben Miller
is a musician and songwriter who has his hands in enough different styles that it's hard to know where to file him. Is this folk? Country? Blues? Rock & roll? Hip-hop? None of them really covers the totality of his sound, and none of them is truly wrong, either. But one thing's for sure --
Miller
is a Southerner, and at his best he's as strong and articulate a spokesman for what
Patterson Hood
calls "the Southern thing" as anyone working in the 2010s. Released in 2018,
Choke Cherry Tree
is the second album
the Ben Miller Band
have cut for
New West Records
, and it finds
fronting a new lineup, with
and his longtime musical partner
Scott Leeper
joined by multi-instrumentalists
Bob Lewis
and
Rachel Ammons
(who previously worked with the band
Tyrannosaurus Chicken
).
is a big pot of sonic gumbo that runs hot-wired guitars up against marching percussion, finds fiddles making friends with drum loops and turntables, and makes room for horns and a string section while lost in Joplin, Missouri at four in the morning.
Chris Funk
of
the Decemberists
produced
, and he does a fine job helping
and his cohorts find a balance as well as a commonality in these 11 songs, which ponder the past and the present, the personal and the political, the quiet and the forceful. Sometimes the thematic expanse of the album feels like it's about to pour outside its own boundaries, as the sore-throat guitars of "Akira Kurosawa" contrast against the moody acoustic ensemble of "My Own Good Time." But somehow
coheres into a whole that's more than the sum of its tracks, and the sincerity of
's songwriting overcomes all.
The Ben Miller Band
sound like they're heading in five or six directions at once on this album, and
is the rare record where that proves to be a virtue, not a failing. ~ Mark Deming