At Miss Peapod’s, Penryn 8pm May 7th

Click on this photo of the band to visit their myspace & hear tunes from their new album Magnificent Fiend (released 28/4)

"an impeccably pitched, retro-rock joy." **** The Guardian

Ethan Miller, of Comets on Fire, is bringing the Howlin Rain all the way from San Francisco to Miss Peapod’s on Wednesday May 7th… before travelling up to Camber Sands to play the Pitchfork ATP festival..

"'Magnificent Fiend' is both indebted to the past and utterly timeless, wild but controlled, chin-stroking clever and head-shaking dumb, referential without being reverential. But above all, it's a lot of fun." FOUR STARS - UNCUT MAGAZINE

It is said Miller conceived of this sound while holed up in his cabin on the Eel River during a winter storm… they are touring to coincide with the release of their second album Magnificent Fiend, released on the San Francisco label Birdman. Holed up in a Cabin? So that’s where the cover of their first album came from…looks like the storm is coming from inside the cabin…

The band decamped to Prairie Sun Recording in the tiny Northern California city of Cotati & cut the album's basic tracks live in the same converted chicken coop where Tom Waits recorded Bone Machine.

Some press…

"Ethan Miller spent much of the past decade fronting Comets on Fire, one of the planet's most cacophonous psychedelic avant-rock bands, and many of the personnel he recruited for Howlin Rain can boast similarly ear-bashing past form. There's some crossover with those tendencies here, but Howlin Rain exist more as a paean to grand, golden-toned rock of the rootsy, 1970s Allman Brothers school. True to that spirit, the first big guitar solo arrives within the first minute, backed up by a heady swirl of Hammond organ and Miller's soul-man holler.....when it all rings true, as on the glorious crescendo and singalong that closes Lord Have Mercy, it's an impeccably pitched, retro-rock joy." 4 stars, The Guardian

“Put simply, 'Magnificent Fiend' rocks. It rocks harder, it rocks bigger, it rocks longer and it rocks more unashamedly than most things since, well, the stuff that inspired this frequently awe-inspiring outpouring of vintage rock (that word again). Imagine MC5 in possession of several extra chords on top of their customary three, or the Allman Brothers Band with the blues replaced by a dizzying day-glo splendour and their twelve-bar chug chucked out in favour of a hard-rocking gallop. Add a hint of Procol Harum's cascading Hammond organ recitals, throat-shredding yet soulful wailing, alternating soothing and screeching virtuoso guitar bits that go on for the better part of an eternity, mind-expanding experimentalism and lyrics oozing with outlaw yarns and mythical mumbo-jumbo , and you've a fair idea of the folks - and the era - Howlin Rain bow down to.” from Gigwise

In support we are lucky to have Andrew Hockey back on our stage. Wherever Andrew plays, be it at the Greenman festival in Wales, or in support of MV & EE earlier in the year, he instantly wins a rowdy or a moody audience and as a friend of mine once put it; he "sorts the men from the boys". Huw Stephens of Radio 1 said this of him..
"Hockey's music stands out a mile; slightly off kilter folk, but so much more than your average singer songwriter. In fact, the words singer and songwriter shouldn't be inflicted upon his beautiful, other worldy music. The EP is very, very special."