From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V6 #82 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Monday, May 1 2006 Volume 06 : Number 082 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Things Hidden Since, Oh, Last Year or So [2fs Subject: [loud-fans] Things Hidden Since, Oh, Last Year or So I don't recall whether anyone here mentioned this or not - but two (two!) Scott Miller-related releases rated mention in last year's Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed by Kim Cooper & David Smay. Both reviews lean a little too heavily on the "Big Star" thing (I suppose that's like saying "Beatlesque": it means what it means, regardless of whether the word accurately reflects where it comes from), but hey. GAME THEORY Real Nighttime (Rational/Enigma, 1985) Up until this point, it was hard to get a handle on Game Theory. Scott Miller had already proven himself capable of brilliant tunesmithing on the level of "Metal and Glass Exact" and "Nine Lives to Rigel Five." But this was the group responsible for "I Wanna Get Hit by a Car," which was as pretentious as its title. On one album and two EPs, Game Theory soared toward the power pop heights, but sometimes settled for a thin, cheesy Casio rhythm. Through it all, they displayed a sense of ambition and high concept they weren't yet capable of reaching. The next step was critical. Luckily, that step was Real Nighttime, the album that introduced Game Theory to the college-radio audience. From its Joycean liner notes and opening track, the band walks a fine line between pretension and genius; genius wins out heartily. Produced by the extremely in-vogue Mitch Easter, Nighttime is full of chiming guitars and great pop melodies. Here, the band prove themselves the equal of any of their Paisley Underground cousins, and very nearly up there with Big Star. There's a certain poignancy propelling these breathtaking melodies. Recurring themes involve growing into your own skin, finding a specific life direction, and sorting out what your peers and family assume to be true. Indeed, Nighttime is a virtual concept album about life after college. The sunny-sounding "I Mean It This Time" asks us to give the singer "all the gin I need/Because I may not be this strong/When I phone my parents and tell them they've been wrong." "Curse of the Frontierland" bitterly recalls how "a year ago we called this a good time." Most of all, there's "24," which finds Miller on the cusp of his mid-twenties pondering opposite signs, parallel lines, and the eternal question: "coffee or beer?" With Game Theory and the Loud Family, Scott Miller would equal and even surpass Nighttime's achievements. However, this one remains my favorite, the unrepeatable product of a very specific place and time in the songwriter's life. (Mike Appelstein) THE LOUD FAMILY Interbabe Concern (Alias, 1996) If Loud Family paterfamilias Scott Miller is the true heir to Alex Chilton's cult-pop throne (and you'll get no argument from me) then Interbabe Concernis his Sister Lovers-a harsh, difficult album drawn from a dark period in the songwriter's life. Unlike Big Star's infamous supernova, the third album from Miller's post-Game Theory combo is no drug-besotted flameout; Miller's a touch too wholesome for that. But, in the face of estrangement - the departures of his wife, Shalini Chatterjee, and longtime producer/collaborator, Mitch Easter (and since Chatterjee is now married to Easter, we can assume that the two events were not mutually exclusive) - Miller proved as adept at fashioning a jagged sonic mosaic from the shattered pieces around him as his hero. Unbuffered by the baroque flourishes Easter used to cushion his experiments in structure and oblique, lit-major lyrics, Interbabe is filled with dizzying mood-swings and mid-song digressions that rival even his masterpiece Lolita Nation for pure bizarro-pop overload - the song titles alone show more concentrated inventiveness than some artists' entire careers. And the songs themselves are chock full of surprises - rolling coin [that's a marble to you, fella - fact-check editor] percussion, a quiet acoustic plaint blemished by steady bursts of atonal noise, even Miller's close approximation of an arena-rock scream. It's a lot to take in, to say the least; unlike the instant gratification one expects from pop music, it takes several spins for the hooks to snag on something. But once they do, and you go from smiling at the cleverness in songs named after shampoo ingredients and the high- and low-culture references throughout (this is surely the only album ever to namecheck Aubrey Beardsley, Alexander the Great, and L. Ron Hubbard) to being bowled over by the sadness and resignation packed into a couplet like "I'm not expecting that I'll end up with you just because I need to/I shouldn't count on having air around me just because I breathe," you'll find yourself a friend of the Family for life. (William Ham) - --Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V6 #82 ******************************