Customer Reviews

Attractive Nuisance

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After someone loaned me Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, I was compelled to immediately buy it, so I picked Attractive Nuisance at the same time. What strikes me is how bands like this are continually overlooked. Attractive Nuisance may not be a classic but it's a top-notch CD and so far it's my favorite of 2000.

One thing I like more about it than Plants & Birds & Rocks & Things is the nice vocal interplay between Alison Faith Levy and Scott Miller, featured on "Years of Wrong Impressions." (She also gets a lead on "The Apprentice.") The noise work by Zappa guitarist Mike Keneally on "Nice When I Want Something" is quite cool. I also love the cover photo and story behind it.

Since this looks to be the final installment of Scott Miller's three-decade love/hate affair with dazzling, micro-composed power-pop, it's hard not to discuss Attractive Nuisance without an undue amount of sentimentality. But since this is Amazon and not the Loud Family fan club, I'll try to stick to my impressions.

It strikes me that the Loud Family's sound has gradually moved away from the shiny sonic maximalism of their 1993 debut, Plants & Birds. More recent albums, while still dense and heady, sound constitutionally more raw and scrappy than other efforts. This sonic curve reminds me of Frank Black's metamorphosis from synthpop dabbler to two-track purist, but with Frank, it always seemed like the quality of his compositions decreased in direct proportion to the amount of time spent arranging and producing them. I feared the same fate for the Loud Family after the raw, boxy Days For Days, which never connected with me after two years of repeat visits, and it took me a good six months to buy Attractive Nuisance out of sheer fear of disappointment. But Scott Miller is not your everyday artist, having made a habit of following lackluster albums (Two Steps from the Middle Ages, The Tape of Only Linda) with absolutely blockbuster chunks of 200% genius (Plants and Birds, Interbabe Concern). And so it was.

Put simply, although it may lack the convoluted production gymnastics of his earlier classics, Attractive Nuisance is filled with at least ten strong, well-crafted, intelligent, and subtly rendered songs. (I would override "Backward Century" only because it gets on my nerves slightly, and "Controlled Burn" is an experiment that, personally, never coheres.) Although long the anti-champion of his own vocal prowess, Scott sings here with textural variety and dynamics, especially the quiet desperation of "Soul DC" and the smarmy crooning of "No One's Watching My Limo Ride." Somewhat in spite of myself, I think Alison Faith-Levy's piano-driven solo turn, "The Apprentice," may be my favorite out-and-out pop song on the album, her brassy voice sounding something like Alanis Morissette crossed with Carrie Bradley from Ed's Redeeming Qualities (a compliment!).

It could take another 1,000 words to describe how much I love the production, the arrangements, the ensemble playing, and the smaller details that make each song so individually rewarding, but I'll just say this: Attractive Nuisance is touching, it's catchy as smallpox, it's funny, it's a great rock record. It's absolutely necessary.

This is a really good album from a band with a great history. If you like this, try their "Interbabe Concern" - one of my favorites, it's chock full, a masterpiece. And by all means, see them live; they're one of the great acts.

I wrote a harsher review below. Hate to admit that I'm wrong. But I think I was. I saw TLF live last night and I've reevaluated some of the material on the record.

I still think about half of it doesn't work, that the album's not as full of brilliance as "Days For Days" or "Interbabe Concern" had been. But the better half of it is a progression forward and a great set of material. "Soul DC" is a great moody hopeful track that ranks with their best. I now agree with what someone says below - this is a good album by a great band.

Give this one, what we all thought was the LF's swan song at the time, a chance. Half of it, as another reviewer states, is great. As good as the three or four standouts on the other inconsistent LF record, "Tape of Only Linda." As with Donnette Thayer in the later days of GT, Miller lets other LF band members (then Kessel & Poore, now Levy), take charge for a song or two. I applaud his democratic action, but as with The Fall, the leader is obviously calling the shots, despite the band's other members. The price to pay for the moments of brilliance on any Miller (or ME Smith) project.

The other half does sound often too uneven, and simply at times weary, similar to the blur of genius and exhaustion on the last record by Game Theory, "Two Steps." Like that album, "Attractive Nuisance" (read the liner notes on the title; typically Scott Miller allusive, literary, wry with double meanings) needs patience. It lacks, as did "Two" to its GF predecessor "Lolita Nation," the grandiosity for good and so-so that LF's "Days for Days" also displayed.

But, each band's last (sort of) album shows that songcraft and intelligence remain hallmarks of not only Scott Miller, the one around whom lineups shift and leave and return (as with ME Smith's The Fall!), but his sometimes overlooked band itself. It seems in each band he needed four earlier records to sort out his intentions, finding in each lineup the core of his sound, however brief and elusive. Although I did cite Miller's dominance, I also need to applaud the rest of his hardworking friends.

Kenny Kessel's bass is the least glamorous instrument on the record as heard in the mix, but with (former GF guitarist) Gil Ray's inventive drumming, the two make an experienced rhythm section with two players who know Miller's idiosyncracies well and have the years with him to rein his excess in when necessary. While the makeup of any Miller-led band seems to keep shifting, I am glad that he returned to Kessel and Ray and combined them to give his meandering mini-epics necessary grounding. Miller is less successful on some of the experimental tracks and moments, but these for any GT/LF fan are standard, tolerated, and sporadically delightful procedure, anyhow.

More and more, listening to this and "Days," keyboardist Alison Faith Levy emerges as latter-day LF's rising star. Her earthier vocals on a couple of tracks make a refreshing change from Miller's "usual obnoxious whine," and while her style reminds me of some early 70s earnest if sexy hippie-chick singer-songwriter, she manages to channel her soulful aura into the record effectively. A surprising pair, her slightly bluesy, nightclubbish persona next to Miller's studio wizard auto-didactism. Her accomplished backup vocals which can be heard well on headphones (highly recommended for any GF/LF record) deepen the emotional impact of Miller's own strained, heartfelt delivery and lyrical eccentricity. Combined, this LF lineup enters moments of beauty on AN never found on any of Miller's earlier records, and that's saying something.

Was it Harry Truman who once remarked,"We're more like we are now than we've ever been before?" Reminds me of a homuncular little jokette:

Q: What sounds more than the Loud Family than the the Loud Family?

A: The new Loud Family album.

For those of us who bother to count our blessings, Scott Miller's continuing presence in the wasted musical landscape sticks out like a giant hydroponic guava among hothouse tomatoes. You have to like guava, though. Anyway, Attractive Nuisance is in fact just that, by turns pretty and thorny, melodic and dissonant, erudite and way-way-way-too-erudite. I'm glad he seems to have settled upon a stable band line-up -- probably the best yet -- latterday Game Theory and formerday Loud Family albums were in many cases marred by Miller's bandmates' awful taste in 80s synths, arena-rock guitar solos, and self-penned songs which, though sometimes good, could never match up to Scott's hyperJoyced little musings. Alison Faith Levy's voice doesn't do much for me but her keyboard stylings have put a good deal of meat on the LF sound's bones. It's a solid effort, if less brilliantly tortured than Days For Days, and the PhotoShop reference in the chorus of "Years of Wrong Impressions" is a small priceless fang of post-contemporaria.

The songs here are pretty retro. This reminds me of the last Game Theory album, "2 Steps From the Middle Ages", which I also found a bit stale though with moments of brilliance. There are moments of greatness here - "Save Your Money" is a perfect little song, and the bridge in "Backwards Century" reaffirms that at times songwriter Scott Miller retains a brilliance that places him at the vanguard of pop songwriters, all-time. But he seems to be losing inspiration. Hope it comes back, either in the near term or the long term.