Howlin Rain, the side project of Comets on Fire frontman Ethan Miller, are often posited as a blend of Comets' psychedelic rock and the more traditional AOR sounds of late 60s/early 70s hard blues acts. It's a bit of a mischaracterization even when you account for the fact that the last Comets record, Avatar, made such strident moves toward that same mix that Howlin Rain became all but superfluous. The issue, more so, is that on their second album, Magnificent Fiend, Howlin Rain make absolutely no attempt to incorporate Miller's sturdy noise background into their tracks, unless you count mixing the organ so high that the songs take on a hallucinatory vibe that was not, in all likelihood, intentional. Instead, the aim was admittedly to complicate Miller's songwriting via layers of classic rock filament.

What's left is an album heavy on signifiers, even in comparison with Howlin Rain's eponymous 2006 debut. Howlin Rain are from San Francisco and have some beards so they'll be compared to The Grateful Dead; Howlin Rain are from California and most of their songs have thick, muddy grooves so they will be compared to Creedence Clearwater Revival. But in terms of both sound and execution Howlin Rain share more with, say, the Faces, at least in so much as Miller, like Rod Stewart, is less interested in crafting perfect melodies as he is in doing some hollerin' and yellerin' on the same stage as four or five of his boys, one of whom goes sort of nuts on an organ.

Ethan Miller doesn't have Stewart's hilarious foxiness; hell, he may not even have the panache and flair of 2006 Ethan Miller-- something "Calling Lightning Pt. 2" goes (literally) lengths to illustrate. "Calling Lightning with a Scythe" was the finest, Dead-iest track on the band's debut, featuring a mélange of strummed acoustics, banjo, and wonderfully confused electric gnashing. Miller reached for his sweetest, stoned-est falsetto and shyly navigated his way through the band's bushy terrain. A side-by-side comparison of "Calling Lightning" and "Pt. 2" highlights most of Magnificent Fiend's shortcomings: the latter is obnoxiously full of big, beefy rock sounds-- tube amps, Hammond organs, a Rhodes piano solo-- so familiar that they are nearly impossible to differentiate. Miller drones about "distant youth" and being a "hard-workin' stiff." Something about the "Golden Age."

Call it a period piece if you must, but Magnificent Fiend doesn't hold up there, either: "Lord Have Mercy" might've been a higher fidelity cousin to Built to Spill's spectacularly referential "You Were Right"-- "That was the dawning of the age…", "Down by the river," etc.-- but it's telling that Miller manages to sink a song already leaning on homage with cliché: his churchy choruses have enough "Mama have mercy on my soul"'s to stuff even the campiest appetites.

It's not until Magnificent Fiend's closing trio of seven-minute behemoths that Howlin Rain find traction, though it's the band's willingness to tweak its grand appropriations, rather than the tracks' epic lengths, that helps the songs stick. "El Rey" finds Miller, for the first time, curling his voice around a chorus before attacking it, and the brass that backs him contributes in making it the most sprightly and limber track on Magnificent Fiend. "Goodbye Ruby" succumbs to funk in a way that allows Joel Robinow's organ to bounce instead of splat. "Riverboat" succeeds further, building towards a sweetened piano coda with-- surprise!-- a hearty, cheesy synth that aims, if not for ELO, at least for Yes. These triumphs, however, don't overpower the album's tepid overflow. Of all the rock stereotypes adopted, the one that ultimately damns Howlin Rain is extra-musical: a big, technically skilled band with good vibes but nowhere to go.