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Another glorious self-inflicted foot-shooting for Scott Miller and band: while Miller can, and does, write 24-karat gold rings around most songwriters, he's also compelled to riddle those same perfect pop songs with spiraling, recursive series of left turns or fill his band's albums with baffling micro-landscapes of alien sound sculpture. Days for Days alternates nine witty, incisive, catchy songs with nine short, untitled sound pieces, many of which seem to present microscopic examinations of segments of their surrounding songs: magnified detail studies of the songs' sonic structure, or miniature dub-like versionings. Listen to the nine sound pieces in a row, and you'll hear nine minutes of diverting and ear-catching sonic ephemera, including some genuinely intriguing moments like the multi-vocal/synth ensemble that ends track 15 or the near-funky electro-Celtic drum pattern at the end of track 5. Listen to the nine songs proper in a row, and a 41-minute masterpiece of non-derivative modern pop reveals itself. But listen to the 18 pieces in order as presented, and - although it takes longer - the songs are given deeper shadings and textures, and the short pieces serve as both relief from and amplification of the songs. Often, when musicians are described as "eclectic," what's meant is that the band is all over the place with no sense of what works and what doesn't: the effort, not the accomplishment, is what's being (faintly) praised. So it's rare indeed to find a genuinely eclectic recording that is not also half-assed: Miller's been around long enough to have experienced and mastered the various sounds and moods that go into the makings of these songs, and that experience helps shape the integration of newer elements of the music so that they never seem half-digested or merely this month's popular musical accessory. So it is that "Deee-Pression," the first single, shows that electro-rock ensembles from Wire to Curve to Garbage have been heard and valued, without sounding like an nth-generation xerox of any of those bands. "Good, There Are No Lions in the Street" has a strongly psychedelic sound, its primary textures provided by what sounds like a murky sample of a distorted electric guitar - if the Mellotron had a "fuzz guitar" setting, it might sound like this - and Kenny Kessel's big fat rolled meatball bass. The band's examination of sound for its own sake means that the album only becomes richer on repeated listens - touches like the tambourine pulse on the chorus of "Deee-Pression," the maracas on "Why We Don't Live in Mauritania," or the fuzz marimba (!) at the end of "Businessmen Are Okay" (rhymed with "karaoke") may not be the first things listeners hear, but the songs would be lacking without them. But the Loud Family doesn't founder on the shoals of the bedroom recordist's craft: too much cool sound atop too shallow songwriting. Miller's melodies are both catchy and distinctive. He'll often use odd but carefully worked out lyrical meters that cause his melodies to expand and contract without regard for conventional musical phrasing, but the effect is seldom awkward or showy. The surface complexity of these songs' arrangements and melodies makes their catchiness act like a stealth predator - what seems at first slippery and elusive becomes, after a handful of listens, attached sucker-like to whatever portion of the brain processes hooks and melodies. After all this, it's perhaps unsurprising that the album culminates with an unabashed Epic - "Sister Sleep," a big, multipart, 8 1/2 minute song that will probably be sloppily compared to "Stairway to Heaven" but actually reminds me of the relatively rare long version of Buffalo Springfield's "Bluebird." Opening with a chord progression straight outta one of Neil Young and Crazy Horse's slow, brooding numbers (but with piano subbing for one of the guitars), moving to an intricate acoustic guitar break and then to a faster middle section in 6/8 time, and finally concluding with an extended coda that returns to the opening theme, Miller and company make it all seem effortless, thereby neatly avoiding the problem with Epics: their tendency to be very self-conscious Big Statements. New keyboard player Alison Faith Levy's acoustic piano is a key element on "Sister Sleep" and in fact is significantly responsible for this album's bright, warm sound and mood. The Loud Family's last album, 1996's Interbabe Concern, alternated harsh, surgical guitarage and bitter, cynical lyrics with icily suspended moments of dreamlike, romantic regret; Days for Days (even without benefit of a lyric sheet) seems less harsh-edged and warmer, although never sappy or saccharine. (And not all is sunshine and light: just as I typed the last sentence, track 9's distorted guitar and synth reminded me that such edgier moments do exist on this album.) Sigh...I haven't even got to the heartbreaking "Way Too Helpful," or the charming "Crypto-Sicko" (not about Milwaukee water), or the sunny and insanely catchy "Cortex the Killer" (or the fact that Scott Miller comes up with the best titles in the business )...are you getting the idea that I really, really like this CD? |
