Game Theory / The Loud Family

Plants And Birds is also amazing!

Why did none of you TELL me about Scott Miller?? Wow

i dunno this thread has been here for a long time. but he was certainly not as lauded as he should have been while alive.

I No Longer Fear The Headless is the most glorious thing in the world

time for some game theory

cover of "roadrunner" on the lolita nation reissue is a lot of fun, there's definitely a lot of what made the modern lovers a great band in game theory

lol shush

Game Theory took a while to grow on me but I like them a lot - I've never quite got into Loud Family but I think that might be changing, Plants and Birds... finally clicked with me after another listen last night.

I really enjoyed reading Miller's Music: What Happened? even though I disagreed with a lot of his positions on things.

Days for Days is classic. Does anyone know why it's not streaming? I thought Alias was the hold up, but the rest of the catalog is on Spotify.

I've got to find that one

Interbabe Concern is...astonishing, at this point rapidly climbing various all-time lists of mine. just stuck in my head constantly now

I bought DFD on iTunes haha

In about a week, LF has become one of my favourite bands. It's ALL amazing

Yeah, I picked up the LF discography one at a time, but it was all in the span of a month or two, mostly via Amazon. This was around 2001, and when DFD was next on my list to buy, I just happened to find it used for like $2 at a Wherehouse Music in a mall in suburban Florida, which I still have a hard time believing.

I got all the LF stuff before I even checked out Game Theory. I love it all now, but still generally prefer the LF albums. And Interbabe is one of my favorite albums by anyone.

Lolita Nation was the first I heard (all of eight or nine days ago haha) and was obviously great, but LF is a step up and away into something much more rarefied (and weirdly uncommercial considering how every track bangs)

Finding out about Scott Miller has been like stumbling across a not so ancient tablet that contains instructions for as many awesome hooks as the rest of the pop/rock canon previously contained

Interbabe Concern is definitely the best one imo too, and therefore one of the best albums I've...ever heard? but the other albums are amazing, I've not been able to get Attractive Nuisance or Days For Days out of my head today. And it's all so clever and surprising - he'll do something like have Soul DC have an unassuming and maybe slightly overlong intro, only to slam into an unbelievable pop anthem without breaking stride. It's heavenly

I've never ventured beyond 'Lolita Nation' - which is brilliant - but you're making a pretty strong case that I should dive into Loud Family.

proceed, and keep us posted :)

Will do!

interbabe was my first and remains my favourite (inspired to check it out back in oh 1997 by Glenn Mcdonald’s review on TWAS), subject to never having been able to find plants and birds.

I think one of the things i love about scott’s work is that it doesn’t sound nearly as “smart” as you’d expect from reading about it.

By way of example, those long twisting rhyming couplets on “Screwed Over By Stylish Introverts” don’t ever sound laboured, it’s more like he just happens to think in metered rhyme.

Attractive Nuisance is almost as great as Interbabe. The run of tracks from...3 to 10? is peerless, amazing. Plus Blackness, Blackness sounds like he heard Smashing Pumpkins and decided he'd show these bozos how to do their own music, in the nicest possible way

Days For Days has some legit jams. Great production too.

Lolita Nation seems to be the critical favourite but Dead Center is my favourite Game Theory album

I hadn't gotten around to the 2 Steps from the Middle Ages reissue until today and the live tracks on it slay - killer "The Waist and the Knees" that's maximal VU freakout.

(inspired to check it out back in oh 1997 by Glenn Mcdonald’s review on TWAS)

Lol this is exactly how I found out about GT/LF

(today would've been Scott's birthday btw)

:(

the best band (Loud Family)

just constantly in my head

The "new" Game Theory album, Across the Barrier of Sound: Postscript is basically the demos for what would become the first Loud Family album, plus some covers (Beatles, Eno, Monkees, Big Star) and a few collaborations with Michael Querico of The Three O'Clock. I doubt I'll ever listen to it more than twice, but hearing how Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things might've turned out as a Game Theory record is tantalizing, and "Inverness" remains one of the most beautiful songs ever written in any form.

Pretty sure I prefer the LF musicians as well as the music but I may give this a listen. If the LF albums were put on Bandcamp I'd certainly buy most or all of them

interesting, though I can't abide Querico.

jajaja ¡que rico!

It's 'Quercio'

Reissue of the last Loud Family album

http://omnivorerecordings.com/shop/what-if-it-works/

The Scott Miller original songs on this are great, and the Anton Barbeau songs are fine. It's a shame it's padded out with covers, which Scott was never able to record convincingly. I sometimes think "Song About 'Rocks Off'" is his best song ever...but he precedes it on the album by covering "Rocks Off", when the whole point of the answer song is his distance from the Rolling Stones!

I see what you're saying about the placement of the "Rocks Off" cover. In this context it's kind of like a flashback with Scott donning unconvincing makeup to play his younger self. I think the Anton songs get progressively better as the album goes on and I actually really like "I've Been Craving Lately," but yeah, "Song About 'Rocks Off'" is the big highlight and the other Scott songs stand above everything else here.

I only got around to listening to Across the Barrier of Sound: Postscript a few weeks ago, but it's a very listenable compilation of his work between the era of the two bands. I could see someone becoming a fan and exploring further if it was the first thing of his that they heard, which wasn't the case with the scraps they had to use as bonus tracks on the previous Game Theory reissues.

Yeah, What if it Works is a bit of a grab bag, but the highs--"Song About Rocks Off," "Mavis of Maybelline Towers," "I've Been Craving Lately"--are very high.

The What if It Works reissue is out now (at least on Apple Music) and listening to it again for the first time in a while, I actually think its stronger than my previous post suggested, especially if you program out the covers (or even just "Rocks Off"). I haven't gotten to the bonus material yet, but I'm happy just to be discovering that I like this album more than I thought I did.

Listening to samples of the bonus tracks, it has hints that make me wish there was a little more wildness or experimentation on the record proper.
I think Scott regarded recording covers as a low-stress activity, but it would have been nice if he could have brought some of that casualness into his songwriting. By 2006, I think he was not only out of practice, there was a paralysis brought on by self-questioning about what was worth saying. You would hope that a collaborator and an album contract would have inspired him to produce with a little less self-consciousness, it could have freed him up.

can you blame him for giving up, he wrote three close to perfect albums in a row and nobody gave a shit

Sure, but then why do the What If It Works project at all? Why not just co-write a few songs with Anton Barbeau and let him record them?
The two "bonus" tracks at the end of the original CD only came about because the owners of 125 Records pressed them to come up with a couple more originals to make the record seem less flimsy. I'm sure they worked as hard on the album as they were able, but it might have been good for Scott to crank out two or three more songs in a week or so without worrying about e.g. whether the metaphor in the middle of the third verse was significant enough, and then record them with a similar lack of fuss.

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.

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

"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.

their best song? christ that is a terrifyingly ignorant call, he was just getting started, just beginning to explore his powers

Holy shit, Wish I Could Stand Or Have. He's done it again! The undisputed master of the sub-2-minute song!

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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