Home Read Classic Album Review: Vinny Miller | On the Block

Classic Album Review: Vinny Miller | On the Block

The singer-songwriter is unpredictable, fearless, untameable and just plain weird.

This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):

 


Sometimes Vinny Miller’s hushed, fragile vocals, gentle strumming and stream-of-consciousness songcraft are so intimate he makes Nick Drake seem like Lemmy.

Other times, he breaks out of his self-imposed singer-songwriter shell and cuts loose with some noisy alt-rock, featuring the unhinged vocals of an out-patient off his medication. And sometimes he just abandons conventional musicality altogether and grunts and howls like a caveman. All of which is a long way of saying that Miller is unpredictable, fearless, untameable and just plain weird — and those are qualities we need a lot more of in music.