SPOTLIGHT: John R. Miller’s ‘The Great Unknowing’ Is a Thoughtful Education on The World’s Crumbling

Editor's Note: John R. Miller, whose new LP titled The Great Unknowing came out today via Rounder Records, is No Depression's Spotlight Artist for July 2026. Read more about Miller's fifth album and stay tuned for more from him all month long.

As the world crumbles slowly, a listless unease prevails. But a startling clarity reveals itself, as well. From this distinctly pensive, unsettled vantage, John R. Miller delivers his latest album, The Great Unknowing. The album assumes its title from “Tollbooth,” the album’s third track on which Miller sings:

Turnpike plaza’s got me down again
Cold fluorescents, toilets overflowing
Under the big silver sky
No exit sign
I set forth on the great unknowing.

Though intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the line, when taken with the song’s torpid yearning, kicks off a short but resolute history of the unravelling of the social construct. “For every crusted nickel I’ve been dimed / I could’ve made it back while I was in my prime / And if you can’t pay / They bill you anyway.” Simmering in even the album’s most upbeat moments (of which there are many), is Miller’s utter disgust with the moral squalor inherent to leaving human beings uncared for in the name of greed and progress. Light listening for the Broadway bar crowd this is certainly not; instead, it’s essential liturgy for humanity.

“At least in this country, but everywhere in the West, we've completely reset what normalcy means. People are more class conscious than they were five years ago, 10 years ago especially, it's because it's had to be shoved in their fucking faces for them to actually see it,” Miller says. “It feels like we've lost our grip on what is true and what's real. So I spent a lot of my time trying to ground myself in what is real and true.”