John R. Miller, a singer-songwriter-picker, is a true hyphenate artist. His captivating debut solo album, Depreciated, features a band that is on fire, as well as songs that are rich with clever wordplay and melancholy imagery. Tyler Childers, a longtime admirer of roots music, describes him as "a well-traveled wordsmith sketching out the world he's seen, three chords at a time" and is one of his biggest longtime followers. With his skillfully crafted songs, Miller manages to simultaneously take us to a shady honky tonk and get introspective. Here, Miller's excellent guitar playing shines together with vocals that remind listeners of the Potomac River's raging whitewaters as they rush beneath the tall peaks of his own Shenandoah Valley.
In "Lookin' Over My Shoulder," a song that wonderfully conveys returning to your old haunts after a breakup, steady percussion, a thudding bass and guiding electric guitar draw us into Miller's universe. As we move on to "Borrowed Time," a song that has the vibe of a smokey barroom but is also Miller at his most serious, musing on "listening to that everlasting engine whine," the various levels — both auditory and thematic — are immediately evident. It begs for two-steppers with its eerie percussion and electric guitar. With "Faustina," a beautiful prayer to the most recent saint that demonstrates Miller in seeker mode, there is more variation introduced. The four-minute epic "Shenandoah Shakedown" has an intimate river that "speaks in tongues" and a "sky frozen black." The album's eleven tracks, all written by Miller, offer a cohesive whole as well as catchy singles that introduce a significant new voice. Depreciated is an album with broad appeal because of Miller's powerful voice, talent for directing a band and—perhaps most importantly—startling songwriting talent..

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