Waiflike - Fifty Pence Piece of Mind

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From the gifted mind of Rich Miller (Waiflike) comes Fifty Pence Piece of Mind. Recorded in the home studio of engineer & co-producer Andy Lagis (Velvet Sun), this Indie offering is both intelligent and affecting as it reverberates withering social norms through mechanized anxieties to expose the gaping cracks and crevices of a bloated, emergent world. This is an album made in a basement in the "burbs" right outside Chicago, as if hiding from the habitual influences offered by the city looming in the distance. Otherworldly rebels such as Avi Kopernik (ex-From Zero), Robert Palos (Ode), Jason Keppe (ex-La Cassette) and Kevin Becker (Feathergun) assisted in the mix.

A contemporary rock opera of sorts (what can I say, I'm a Kink's fan too), Fifty Pence Piece of Mind gives Miller the voice to spotlight compositions that expose a variety of characters plucked from our own backyards. We are there after all. We all read the dirty ink, hear the broadcast lies, and watch the televised Big Brother ooze its message across our living room floors. And in that arena Miller chants "Money & Movie Stars", breathlessly wonders "Why is the Bed so Wet" and hauntingly declares "What Are We Waiting for Now".

Native Chicagoan Rich Miller is a singer, a songwriter and a multi-instrumentalist. In 1999 he released Elysium under the alias Spill and in 2002 he released waiting for the tide under Richard Neal Miller. Through these samplings Waiflike has emerged, and Fifty Pence Piece of Mind effectively showcases the results.

Needless to say there is a lot to get keyed up about, and I for one cannot wait for the next offering from the basement in the burbs. To crank it up to concert volume or tone it down to suit your Lava Lamps, the album urges one's attention to every song, every lyric lilting. But it is in "Plastic Pigs" that Miller creates a rock opus magnum: lighters lit and fans swaying to a song that warns duplicity, and dares it to continue least it unit us all in song. And so it is Waiflike, that ethereal voice lifting from the other side of consciousness that offers listeners Fifty Pence Piece of Mind - each and every listen.