American

Sounding like Spınal Tap isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Christopher Guest, after all, is a brilliant songwriter, and the ostensible parodies that he penned for the faux-metal act were excellent songs, often more juiced with clever turns and memorable hooks than the pompous shred they were deflating. There isn’t any such humor audible in Ethan Miller’s Howlin Rain, and The Russian Wilds – the band’s third album – is their slickest yet. In producer Rick Rubin’s hands, Miller’s mystic blues-rock is just as packed with drama as anything on Smell the Glove. They could be Polymer labelmates. Miller pulls off the ridiculous blues-dude growl pretty well. On the vaguely Celtic and totally bombastic “Phantom in the Valley,” he leaps an octave for the second verse as the band drops into a full Bon Jovi/Tenacious D cowboy gallop. Then the B3 comes in. The 11 songs serve as a picaresque and ritualistic restaging of American roadrock for the purpose of letting Miller shred. During a surprisingly tender break in “Walking Through Stone,” one expects to hear bikers revving their hogs in the background before the band crashes back in – a conclusion that’s so vintage it could only have come from the simulacrum-encrusted Now.