After his deal with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings ended, San Francisco-based songwriter Ethan Miller took the opportunity to reconfigure and retool his bluesy boogie band, Howlin Rain. The resulting album, Mansion Songs, is the band’s fourth full-length LP and first for new label Easy Sound Recording Co., and it’s their best album since Miller launched the outfit nearly a decade ago. Miller is still clear about his roots—rock greats like the Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Humble Pie—but Mansion Songs is loose and mangy, on par with his albums fronting psychedelic warriors Comets On Fire.

Serving as co-producer with Eric Bauer at “Bauer Mansion” in San Francisco, Miller plays much of the album himself, but Mansion Songs also features fantastic interplay between Miller and Meg Baird, Cyrus Comiskey, Charles Saufley and John Gnorski. Miller’s voice here is raw and unhinged—a stark contrast from the more polished vibe of 2012’s The Russian Wilds —and he sounds thrilling on woozy opener “Big Red Moon.” Miller is in top form, soulfully raspy on the Faces-like “Meet Me in the Wheat,” and particularly loose on “The New Age,” where he shouts and hollers, “I awoke! I awoke!” over Cindi Kazarian’s sawing viola. The record’s barest songs, “Coliseum,” “Restless” and “Lucy Fairchild,” recall Alex Chilton and Jim Dickinson’s work on Big Star’s Third, achieving a harrowing synthesis between intimate acoustic guitars, delicate harmonies, echoing electric guitars and lush strings.

The album’s final song, the seven-minute “Ceiling Fan,” is a sort of Beat-esque poem referencing Werner Herzog, Federico Fellini and Woody Allen with Miller whispering like Tom Waits or Bruce Springsteen—circa The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle —about “the grand, dark coda of Western civilization,” citing poets like Dylan, Whitman, Beckett and Blake over a clattering, building swell. It would likely sound preposterous if Miller’s wide smile couldn’t be felt in between each line about “romantic junkies” and “sourdough bakers,” adding a sense of stately hilarity to the sprawling narrative.

Miller has never been shy about referencing his heroes from rock and roll’s mythic past, and that sometimes means that Howlin Rain feels more like an enjoyable history lesson than a vital statement. Mansion Songs finds Miller in possession of his roots, but fully present, wild and weird.