Scott was famously (or as "famously" as he could be) meticulous, and did talk, during his life, about how slow the songwriting process was for him. There's an "Ask Scott" column on this that I would dig up for an exact quote right now if I weren't swamped with work right now.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Friday, 25 March 2022 20:18 (two years ago) link
Plenty of his songs were nominated for that <2 minutes poll, but surprisingly Rayon Drive wasn't - what a discovery, what a song! The single thing on Real Nighttime that most clearly points to what brilliance was to come imo
― imago, Sunday, 16 October 2022 18:48 (one year ago) link
"Rayon Drive" is great, probably their most convincing rocker to that point. I actually find Real Nighttime less convincing as an album than Blaze of Glory, though it's a step-up in professionalism for sure (finally recording in a studio instead of Scott's bedroom!). Someone online called "Waltz the Halls Always" their best song, while for me it's quite possibly his worst original, a trebly mess.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 17 October 2022 01:03 (one year ago) link
their best song? christ that is a terrifyingly ignorant call, he was just getting started, just beginning to explore his powers
― imago, Monday, 17 October 2022 10:14 (one year ago) link
Holy shit, Wish I Could Stand Or Have. He's done it again! The undisputed master of the sub-2-minute song!
― imago, Monday, 17 October 2022 18:09 (one year ago) link
2 Steps From The Middle Ages is both a sign of songwriting greatness maturing and improving, but also a sign of a particular band that had run its course. Easy to say these things in hindsight, but you can absolutely hear what Miller was about to unleash, and why he had to shake up the people who were going to help him
― imago, Monday, 17 October 2022 18:14 (one year ago) link
There was an 89/90 Game Theory lineup with Michael Quercio, with Joe Becker as the common denominator with the first Loud Family. According to the biography, the Lolita Nation/Two Steps lineup was wilder and fiercer onstage than you might think from the records.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 17 October 2022 19:18 (one year ago) link
Oh, the bonus tracks include some live stuff! A rollicking Baker Street on RN and a fearsome Waist + Knees on 2 Steps! So I can well believe it. But studio recordings were what he most believed in, I'd say
― imago, Monday, 17 October 2022 19:53 (one year ago) link
Is it a common sentiment among fans that Game Theory were great and Loud Family greater btw? Or is that just my own particular splitting of small differences?
― imago, Monday, 17 October 2022 19:55 (one year ago) link
The Loud Family records were recorded more professionally, with musicians of greater technical skill, but I don't really feel that Miller himself made any particular leap as a songwriter or record-maker between 1988 and 1993. I suspect, though that Game Theory accumulated more fans than Loud Family did - Lolita Nation made the top ten of the college charts, was the only Miller album reviewed in Spin (which is where I heard of them), etc. So there may be a sentimental attachment among many fans to the earlier band. I feel like his music "fit better" in the 80s context, for what that's worth, there wasn't quite the same generic niche for him to inhabit in the 90s.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:12 (one year ago) link
Well, Lolita Nation is an event album - it sounds years ahead of its time, it's big and bold and mad - probably my overall 3rd-favourite of his and easy to see why it got more cred than anything else he did. 90s stuff pearls before critical swine
― imago, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:19 (one year ago) link
I think one mistake he might have made post-87 was to back away from making "boldly conceptual" records. I think he took particular umbrage at suggestions that his music was over-intellectualized, so he took pains to make the theoretical element of his work subtle, under the surface of a "rock record". Once someone suggested on their website that he should make a 69 Love Songs and his response was something like "great, another reason for people not to buy the records". But I think that a project like that could have helped him explore his ideas and given him a hook with potential listeners.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 16:07 (one year ago) link
well i mean...he backed away from it for a while, but clearly eventually decided fuck it, they don't want straight rock records, have THIS
and out popped Interbabe Concern and Days For Days, which, fine, aren't quite 69 songs long, but which are utterly uncompromising, panoramic, totalised visions of his musical capabilities
― imago, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 20:51 (one year ago) link
and then he gave pure rock one last perfect bash and they didn't want that either. christ what bastards
― imago, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 20:52 (one year ago) link
little in music makes me more genuinely furious than the shunning of Scott Miller
I think a project like 69 Love Songs benefited from coming along at a time when the internet was well and truly established as a medium for communicating about popular music. It’s an album which makes more sense to read about than to hear random songs from out of context.
If Scott was still (perhaps correctly?) angling for college radio play during the nineties then from a certain angle it makes sense that even relatively fractured albums like Plants & Birds and Interbabe Concern try to have a bob each way.
So a song like “Such Little Nonbelievers” sounds like an appealing rock song designed for radio I guess, but then has lyrics like “ We're fighting smiling Irish / They say that we look good in uniform, and mais oui! / So good you couldn't pry the cold dead fingers / Of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders free”.
But in the end it also makes sense that that very gambit saw the music kind of fall between two stools both commercially and critically.
― Tim F, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 23:41 (one year ago) link
which is a shame, because such a synthesis makes for incredible compelling art - as I often think about Miller, he thought in terms of a classical pop canon and his tastes were very orthodox in a lot of ways, but within that he was a remarkably experimental songwriter, a tension which brings his work to the level of alternative-pop brilliance
― imago, Thursday, 20 October 2022 10:03 (one year ago) link
― Vaguely Threatening CAPTCHAs, Thursday, 20 October 2022 14:45 (one year ago) link
With an album called "Didactic Debt Collectors", guess I shouldn't be surprised this reminds me of the Loud Family:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCueXPlpBJk
Full album here: https://finalhouse.bandcamp.com/album/didactic-debt-collectors
― j.o.h.n. in evanston (john. a resident of chicago.), Wednesday, 28 February 2024 23:59 (three months ago) link