Last week I was at a cricket match. I know I’ve written about this already, but there was a party taking place in the function room at the ground, and the music from the covers band was wafting across the pitch.
They weren’t bad. Far from it, actually. The trouble was they added nothing. Every song was merely a facsimile of the original.
Right at the end of The Great Unknowing, there’s a version of “Walk Of Life”. It’s a song I love and, coincidentally, one the aforementioned covers group played while the match was still going on. Here, though, John R. Miller turns it into something genuinely unsettling, but fascinating too.
Yeah, the boy can play.
Interesting and unsettling are very much the stock in trade on The Great Unknowing. Miller left his comfort zone behind and travelled to Tulsa to record at the legendary Church Studio, drawn by the city’s musical legacy and its links to artists such as J.J. Cale. The result is his most ambitious work to date.
“Don’t Bet On Me” opens proceedings with a sinister edge. The half-spoken delivery makes it sound less like advice and more like a threat, setting the mood for a record that constantly finds shadows lurking beneath apparently familiar sounds.
“Far From The Station” is lugubrious and laid-back. “You’re the only thing I’ve been doing wrong,” Miller sings, while the lap steel sounds ready to wander into the nearest honky-tonk. “Tollbooth” begins acoustically and changes the tempo, but there is a real beauty to the desolation in its words.
“Think I’ll Start Over” is pleasingly old-school without ever sounding like a George Jones impersonation. That distinction matters. Miller understands tradition, but he isn’t interested in simply copying it.
“Looking For A Place To Die” examines the haves, the have-nots and the class struggle. Just to be contrary, it is probably the cheeriest thing here, even as it suggests that progress is killing us all. That contradiction is central to the album: bleak ideas dressed in music that can sometimes make you smile.
There is an undeniable class to the songs and the playing throughout “Steering Wheel Drums”. It could only have been made by an American, carrying with it the highways, bars and battered landscapes of the country that produced it.
“Daughter Of Night” takes a more overtly folky turn, with the screech of the fiddle providing the perfect accompaniment. Then “A World Away” arrives in a hail of feedback and finds Miller delivering his lines with something approaching Tom Waits levels of eccentricity. “We’d listen to Lou Reed and get stoned,” he recalls. That explains quite a lot.
“Day Drinking” effectively begins the second half with the magnificently simple justification: “I just ran out of reasons not to.” Miller is exceptionally good at lines like that. They sound casual but reveal entire lives.
“Golden Light” showcases his expressive, lived-in voice. The song could have come from Jason Isbell, and praise gets no higher than that. Miller’s singing has the same ability to make every word sound experienced rather than imagined.
His songwriting is every bit as compelling. “Two Days Clean” is stark and vulnerable, with an accordion that inevitably brings Counting Crows to mind. “If You Could Only See Me Now” returns to the album’s pleasingly traditional side, but again there is enough personality here to prevent it from becoming an exercise in nostalgia.
This is not a short record. Clocking in at more than an hour, The Great Unknowing asks for a proper commitment. Whether it is delivering honky-tonk-ready material such as “Double Lives”, the strange atmosphere of “Static And White Noise” or something else entirely, though, these songs always compel.
“Cornbread And Pinto Beans” also underlines the humour running through the record. The character at its centre is enormous fun, proof that Miller understands darkness is most effective when a little light is allowed to creep through.
Never mind the known unknowns. Here is what is clear: The Great Unknowing is superb. As my mum used to say, a change is as good as a rest.
Rating: 8.5/10
