Colin Miller makes the kind of music you already know the words to on a first listen. At least that’s how I felt when the weeping guitars went subterranean during “Birdhouse” and I suddenly began singing “If I stay here, I will die in silence here” along with him.
The first time I ever heard Colin Miller’s name was when he was introduced during the live rendition of “You Are Every Girl To Me” on MJ Lenderman’s album “And the Wind (Live and Loose!)“. Toward the end of the Jackass-indebted love song, the group launches into an instrumental jam that allows Jake Lenderman to do a roll call of his band, the Wind. Lenderman’s voice kind of lulls as he calls out Miller, looping around the L’s and playfully drawing out the R in his drummer’s last name.
The multi-instrumentalist’s new LP, “Losin’, is yet another example of a Tar Heel entering Drop of Sun Studios and exiting with the best album of their career. “Losin’ is a filled-out upgrade from the Haw Creek material, and Miller has bettered himself in all pertinent areas—singing, writing, playing, “Porchlight,” which swerves and aches from Xandy Chelmis’ pedal steel, is a lost-in-translation, ships-in-the-night tale of heartache.
He might be waiting up for an old flame back home, but someone in Beaumont, Texas is just as sweet on him. MJ Lenderman swaps roles with Miller and steps behind the drum kit, cutting loose on a snare rattling like a box of bang snaps. “Porchlight” is a track with harmonies that could roar in 105.5: The Outlaw’s daily rotation, and “Darlin’, you know you’re still my #1 tube-top angel” may very well go down as the lyric of the year. This is all captured on Colin Miller’s sun-faded sophomore album, “Losin’, both explicitly and implicitly. While some songs call directly to distinct moments, open in their mourning, the whole album is tinged with melancholia as Miller stubbornly pushes through his permanently changed life. The fuzzy melodies and ambient soundscapes of the album, combined with Miller’s unflinching misery, create a lightly haunted feeling that envelops the record, not in a literal ghostly sense, but rather in the way that life is constantly permeated by the presence of others, and once they are gone, the unrelenting memories remain. Through Miller’s signature North Carolina twang, “Losin’ is an album that is dogged in its sadness and stubborn in its acceptance of change.
A track like “Cadillac” sounds effortlessly timeless, arranged with renders of NASCAR crashes, tinted windows, toothy laughs, and routines of “suckin’ down coffee, Pall Malls, and oxygen.” Micro and macro blame encroaches like a summer hot spell, but you can find sketches of King’s beloved image in the foibles, as Miller sings “there goes all my hope for you” and his vocals stack in twos, maybe threes before locking into Lenderman’s guitar leads—lines blackened with the right amount of sludge.
Colin Miller – Rhythm Guitar, Lead Guitar, Vocals, Synths, Aux percussion, Drum machine programming
Jake Lenderman – Drums, Lead Guitar
Ethan Baechtold – Bass, Keys, Aux percussion
Xandy Chelmis – Pedal Steel
released April 25th, 2025
All songs written by Colin Miller
The Fat Angel Sings 