Customer Reviews

Days for Days

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

 

 

Days for Days is another example of Scott Miller's ability to craft masterworks out the most simple pieces. His mastery of the songwriting process seems to always overshadow his much under-appreciated guitar and melodic composition abilities. You will find that songs like "Business Men are OK" will stick in your head for days. I think that "Way Too Helpful" is in itself a masterpiece of pop that alone makes this cd worth the purchase price. I've had the pleasure of meeting Scott through a friend a few times before I had heard his music, and found him to be a incredibly normal, decent man. His music should be mandatory listening for anyone who is attempting a career in songwriting.

Smart-aleck but never smart-ass, the Beatles-inspired Loud Family is more meticulous and literate than recent Guided by Voices, with whom it shares a muse, and brainier than just about anyone. More evidence has arrived, in the form of the S.F.-based quartet's new release. The nine songs are pretty straightforward arty power pop, easier first listens than those on 1996's brilliant but somewhat cramped "Interbabe Concern" (if not as glistening as 1993's gorgeous "Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things"); each song is preceded by a one-minute shard of throwaway interlude, but after the first play-through, you'll just program all of them out, so don't worry about it. Despite the unpredictable arrangements and songwriter/producer Scott Miller's acquired-taste singing (with slightly jarring harmonies by new keyboardist Alison Faith Levy), there's plenty of straight-ahead rocking -- check out the grinding "Deee-Pression" -- and enough guitar hooks and sparkling melody to transform Miller's cascades of puns and personal and geographic references into bright singalong chants (just try to get the warm chorus of "Crypto-Sicko" out of your head). And as an added bonus, in the bouncy "Cortex the Killer," he even name-checks his hometown of Sacramento for the first time since his '80s days fronting Davis-based indie heroes Game Theory!

Days for Days is not the right place to start for someone wanting to get into Scott Miller (i.e., Game Theory and The Loud Family). For that, head straight to either Interbabe Concern or Plants and Birds (both from the Louds). I remember getting Days for Days in 1998 and hoping for a smashing follow-up to '96's masterpiece Interbabe Concern. It wasn't quite to be, as this is a different kind of album. It took me a while to get comfortable listening to this one.

For the uninitiated, here's The Loud Family in a nutshell: cultured, polished lyrics; excellent sound quality; breathtaking melodicism and intricate, ever-changing chord structures; juicy, high-pitched, up-front male vocals; inventive musicianship.

There are nine songs here, and most of the time I program my CD player for the even-numbered tracks only. This would have made a stunning seven-song, seven-track EP. There are at least four gems here that easily measure up to anything Miller has ever done:

"Good, There are No Lions in the Street" is a nicely restrained tune containing shrewd wordplay and, as another reviewer mentioned, that wonderful tempo change. "Way Too Helpful" is one of the most gorgeous tunes Miller has done in his career. "Businessmen are okay" is quirky but catchy, actually sort of in a similar vein to "One More for St. Michael" (from Game Theory). "Why We Don't Live in Mauritania" is almost worth one star all by itself, just classic, classic Miller!

"Mozart Sonatas" just never grabbed me, and "Crypto-Sicko" seems a bit awkward and overwrought. The other three tunes are quite decent but wouldn't be included in my fantasy "Loud Family's Greatest Hits" collection. Still, there are things to like and love about almost everything on Days for Days. Highly recommended for those who are already fans but haven't bought it yet (if you're new, get the far more accessible Interbabe Concern). It's a bit like Tape of Only Linda -- that album is widely acknowledged as not being up to the standards set by other Miller works, but it still contains three of the greatest essential Miller songs ever -- "It Just Wouldn't Be Christmas," "Still its Own Reward," and "Ballet Hetero."

Everything about this record is excellent. The songwriting is inspired even by Scott Miller's high standards. The band's playing is top-notch, especially Allison Faith Levy's space-tinged keyboards and Gil Ray's propulsive but tasteful drumming. The production is clear and strong. This was the best record that I heard in 1998, and it's got to be the most underestimated of that year. Highlights are "Way Too Helpful", "Good There Are No Lions in the Street", "Why We Don't Live In Mauritania", and "Sister Sleep" among others. Pop-rock lives.

I like this more than "Interbabe Concern," which I found too insular, if understandable as it was the post-breakup exorcism of Scott Miller's latest personal demons. This, the third LF full-length, it combines the poppier moments on "Tape of Only Linda" with the sprawling restlessness of the jittery debut "Plants & Birds (etc.)" "Days" deserved much more promotion and recognition, but I suppose indie record company woes accounted for its lack of a higher profile. Rectify this now; buy this.

The trade-off of untitled instrumental interludes that comment and ping off of the ten standard (by comparison!) songs cleverly channels Miller's often winning but admittedly a bit exasperating brilliance. He resists easy categorizing, and his albums like to dash about from noise to inertia. What's a first in Miller's long career is that the ten-ten structure it gives him a template to work with, which such ambitious efforts as "Plants" and especially Game Theory's undisciplined if lovable "Lolita Nation" lacked and (maybe?) needed.

As another reviewer has detailed here, lyrical moments emerge often as this album's standout contributions to the legacy of Miller and company. GT/LF veteran Gil Ray combines with Kenny Kessel's bass to provide the solid, steady base upon which Miller's arrangements, guitar roamings, and lyrical angst can rise. This time, however, Alison Faith Levy's keyboards provide necessary ambiance and amazingly moving-- if all too short snippets of her own-- instrumental accomplishment. She rounds out the sound better than previous keyboardists in LF and GT did for Miller. Less tinkly, less of the new-wave synthetic tinkle that Miller has said he does love, perversely, I guess. (But that's precisely why "new wave" is a GT genre in musical references for GT on and off the Net, I suppose.)

"Days" does have annoying bits, as I find on every Miller-penned album, but anybody who listens to him knows this is the norm for his approach. He needs to let out all of the possibilities that he bottled up for a year or two, it seems, on each of his records. As a reviewer recommends, I would not advise a newcomer to begin here, but with "Plants." Once you get Miller's groove, you can tolerate his eclecticism. It's up to us to sort out the diamonds from the dross. Yes, the cover's as awkward (if more colorful) as "Interbabe Concern," but the brighter tones of the outside enter to warm up into the recovery of Miller's balance between explosion and inversion. The best GT/LF moments are these, when Miller allows his band to fill out the depths and build the heights of the arrangements that he can thrash around within.

I absolutely loved Plants and Birds, and liked Interbabe Concern. This outing hasn't really found its way into my pantheon of greats...there are some decent tracks, but everything feels slightly bitty, with hard pointy edges and little flow, at both the level of individual tracks and the album as a whole. I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point for the Family.

This album's cohesive theme is the best Loud Family yet. It reminds me more of the old Game Theory, (Scott Miller's original band). The tempo changes are the best!

World-class tunesmith Scott Miller wrote DAYS, he says, during the happiest year of his life to date. To celebrate, he hired a calmer, quieter band for the Loud moniker. They often sound like if Radiohead, fresh from alienating its THE BENDS fans and getting a whole bloody new lot, decided to alienate _them_ by doing OK COMPUTER again, this time cheerful.

The earlier LF were a rawk band, and synth-geek extraordinaire Paul Weineke's ideas of "that's a _nice_ sound" were many people's ideas of "are you sure your CD player is working okay?". But on DAYS, Gil Ray drums with subtlety, guitarist Scott shows no acquaintance with Van Halen beyond "the cover of FAIR WARNING where there's punching out of lights", and Alison Faith Levy is nearly as creative as Weineke with her synth-programming, but with a penchant for oddball prettiness; even the noises on "Why We Don't Live In Mauritania" that would panic you if your furnace made them, seem like lullaby here. Besides, from "Cortex The Killer" to the elegaic closer "Sister Sleep", she's not forgetting that "keyboardist" also means "pianist"--- and she's good, in a worthy mainstream sense.

As for Scott's happiest year, it's relative: "Good, There Are No Lions In The Street" celebrates a new relationship by noting that hmm, it doesn't seem to have fallen apart just yet: "Good ventilation when smoke's coming off of me. We're super clean so there's gloss and sheen. Will it remain so when cleaning is drudgery, grudgery?" The most simply fun, balls-out rocker of his career breaks the softness of this album, and its singalong tagline is "Fit of depression right now!".This is a happy album because Scott, who when I witnessed him pre-concert was contentedly discussing Jacques Derrida's later philosophical works with a fan, is concentrating on the world beyond his own and his girfriend's navel, be it "...Mauritania" analyzing of the appeal of big-city life ("letting someone else do the driving, who knows where we're arriving, despite hysteria... we like something else going on") or the same song's Beach Boys homage ("New York scenes with the way they talk, knock me out when they jazz the rock. Cold keeps Chicago boyfriends warm, I dig how they defy the norm. The West Coast, well, I'll admit it's still the most, hanging out near Manson slayings, industrial decayings, inverse utopia", sincerity proven by the fact that he, and 30 million others, still live in California where the (distr)action is). Not to mention "Mozart Sonatas", with its improbably infectious 10/8 melody-and-counterpoint lines and sarcastic 2-minute blare about how willing we are to accept what we're told is art, yet turn up our nose at spirituality, especially if it's not ours.He's not endorsing Buddhism himself; he's just learning empathy, nonjudgmentalism. Check the excellent advice on the unbelievably gorgeous "Way Too Helpful": "for once in your life, go home worth unproved and the earth unmoved".

"Businessman Are Okay", creatively-produced near-alt-country, is no more likely to become a fluke hit than Timbuk3's "the Future's So Bright, I Can Get By With A Fairly Weak Flashlight" would've been, but its "I heard the Prophet Elijah say businessmen are okay" is a sheepish Biblical reference to a prophet whose bad luck turned around only after surrendering his core ideas--- a change from '93 Scott's proposed revolution "to prove we've got an overactive mind of our own". "Cortex..." compares ideologies to "priapic erections", which are an involuntary, near-constant, medically-problematic readiness for, er, action.

The nine little tracks, experimentally re-working bits of the nine full songs, include similar lines: "Good, there are no Wal-Marts worth looting, good, there are no Warhols worth shooting"; "What words work with what worlds?". I don't, to give an evasively thoughtless answer, think Scott's work in ours. But DAYS, melodic, blessed by Alison's inventive vocal harmonies, and brimming with songs that couldn't be subtitled "Slit My Wrists part II", should've been the Louds' best chance to prove me wrong.