Magnificent Fiend

By turns pummeling and pastoral, MAGNIFICENT FIEND oscillates between roaring, all-stops-out, Hammond organ-driven tracks and delicate electric piano passages, topped by harmonized, often dissonant guitar lines. Toss in counter-melodic bass, sometimes quirky breaks, and extended instrumental sequences that are either ascending to the heavens or cascading softly, softly from the skies in sparkling showers of gunpowder and smoke. All held together by Miller's distinctive, crushed-velvet roar - redolent of British R&B giants Steve Marriott or Terry Reid - which extends to a sweet, plaintive falsetto; and, as the album's oxymoronic title might imply, the lyrical content.