Punk edge loses out to sensitivity in Miller’s solo debut
Rhett Miller’s first official solo album lacks the individuality he had with his band the Old 97s.
BY MATT SIMPSON
Staff Writer

Now that Rhett Miller is without his band and has distanced himself from their unavoidable country influences, he has become decidedly cute.

While the Old 97s could always compensate for Miller’s tendency to be embarrassingly cheesy with something approximating punk, there is nothing punk about “The Instigator.” Instead, the album sounds impressed with his own sentimentality. It thrives on lines like “I’d smother you with kisses/I’d give you outer space” — lines designed to make 16-year-old girls swoon.

I’ve been waiting for it to come out for a while now. Ever since I read somewhere that the Old 97s weren’t releasing anything for another couple of years and that I’d have to settle for the various side projects and solo albums that would spawn from the group’s “temporary” hiatus.

Rhett Miller was/is the lead singer of the Old 97s, a Texas band that has been seen playing great rock ‘n’ roll music in downtown Dallas at the Gypsy Tea Room or Trees or some over Deep Ellum dive.

The 97s released their sixth studio album “Satellite Rides” last summer. It was apparently seen by record company executives as the band’s attempt at a break-through album, something that might stretch their fame beyond state limits and propel them into TRL and the Billboard Top 20. As such, it was mildly successful. “Satellite Rides” did enjoy a brief stint in the Billboard Top 100, and it received some airplay on the WB’s hit TV show “Dawson’s Creek.”

Unfortunately, that was not good enough for the band’s record label, Electra. Electra bought out the remainder of its contract with the Old 97s, then signed Miller, the “star” of the group, to a solo deal forbidding him from recording with his old group.

Miller’s first “official” solo album (he released another solo album, “Mythologies,” while still in high school), is void of the musicians who have accompanied Miller throughout most of his musical career. In turn, Miller has made no attempt to recapture his band’s sound on this album. He’s said before that the songs on “The Instigator” are what he considers inappropriate for the 97s.

“I believe in bands, in the power of a collective effort,” Miller said. “But there is a kind of vision ... that can only be carried out within the framework of a solo album.”

This sounds like a step forward for a songwriter, but really Miller’s vision only strips his music of the individuality it enjoyed under the 97s. Now he sounds like he’s trying to be any number of predictably insightful singer/songwriters operating today. Like John Mayer or Pete Yorn or Jack Johnson. And while there’s really nothing wrong with that, it does little to better his career as a solo performer. Actually, it just buries him at the bottom of a stack of similar artists who made claims on the title “Sensitive Genius” years before the 97s were ready to abandon alt-country.

But “The Instigator” is not a bad album. I mean yes, it tries too hard, but so does Radiohead, or even Sgt. Pepper’s. There are still plenty of good songs on “The Instigator.” Songs where emotion doesn’t sound like a concerted effort at appearing “sweet,” songs like “Things That Disappear,” “World Inside the World,” and the single, “Come Around.” And there’s even a glimpse of Old 97s rock ‘n’ roll fuzz guitar presented in “Crash on the Barrelhead” in the song “The El.”

But for the most part, the album is simply mediocre. After years of listening to Rhett Miller with the Old 97s, “The Instigator” sounds forced and entirely too hung up on competing with all the other sensitive males making music today.