Jenks Miller - Spirit Signal (Northern Spy)

For his first widely distributed solo release, psych-metal/alt-country guitarist Jenks Miller (Horseback, Mount Moriah) delivers a dusty slab of improvised and loosely structured country-blues Americana.

Spirit Signal is wide open, all plains and desert flatlands where the lonesome cowboy stops at nightfall to build a fire, gaze at the stars and contemplate the choices he’s made in life, knowing he can’t go home again, but uncertain of just where he’s headed. Here, Miller’s guitar picking becomes the nameless cowboy’s thoughts, memories past and paths to the future, while the hum of the pickups is the grand expanse of his surroundings. The majority of the album is Sonny Sharrock with a cowboy hat, at least until the closing 22-minute, “Miró,” a Melvins-heavy epic marked by Miller’s distorted Hammerhead/Vaz-like vocals. Despite the lack of drums, it crashes nonetheless, distorted guitar colliding with reverberation, eventually gliding into waves of feedback as the cowboy’s catharsis is complete: what’s done is done and the only place to go is forward, to a new beginning somewhere elsewhere.

Though it may appear simple on the outset, Spirit Signal is a complex, introspective record that bares the soul of its composer. Play it at night by firelight and experience the journey for yourself.