The Loud Family

Scott Miller launched the Loud Family to serve as the vehicle for his compositions once his earlier outfit Game Theory, a cult favorite, came to an end. The new band blended astute melodic lines and lasting pop refrains with daring structures plus forceful studio editing and electronic treatments. Whereas Game Theory had sought to smooth their sound for wider acceptance toward the close of their run, the Loud Family let Miller pursue an unfiltered path that placed their abrasive qualities squarely in view. Their opening effort, the 1992 album Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, struck equilibrium between tunefulness and experimentation, while 1996’s Interbabe Concern, written and tracked after Miller’s divorce, trained attention on the songs’ angular contours. Once the group split, Miller arranged a lone Loud Family reunion to team with Anton Barbeau on the 2006 release What If It Works?.

In 1990 singer, guitarist, and songwriter Scott Miller ended his well-regarded pop band Game Theory after more than a decade; he later recounted to a journalist that he had intentionally shaped the group’s later material toward a more commercial tone to satisfy fellow members who wanted a viable market path. Though their last record, Two Steps from the Middle Ages, proved their most approachable, it made little commercial impact. Miller applied that experience when he formed the Loud Family, whose sound retained connections to the psychedelia-tinged smart pop of his prior work yet advanced his taste for dissonance, aural montage, and angular forms; with this ensemble he clearly aimed to generate pop that would forcefully test the genre’s limits.

The Loud Family came together in 1991 and issued their debut album Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things in 1993. Alongside Miller handling lead vocals and rhythm guitar, the lineup included percussionist Jozef Becker (who had appeared on Game Theory’s final three albums), lead guitarist Zachary Smith, keyboardist Paul Wieneke, and bassist R. Dunbar Poor. One persistent obstacle for Game Theory had been lineup instability, and the Loud Family encountered the same pattern; the original members remained intact long enough to cut a second album, 1994’s The Tape of Only Linda, and tour extensively behind it, yet by the arrival of the third Loud Family record, 1996’s Interbabe Concern, Becker, Smith, and Poor had departed, Dawn Richardson had joined on drums, Kenny Kessel had taken over bass, and Miller had assumed complete guitar duties. Interbabe Concern also ended Miller’s partnership with producer Mitch Easter, who had overseen most of Game Theory’s catalog plus the Loud Family’s first two albums. Miller handled production himself, rendering the band’s already fractured sound more extreme, with Interbabe Concern and 1998’s Days for Days filled by brief musical fragments placed among longer, conventionally shaped tracks (half the songs on Days for Days carried no titles).

Days for Days also brought a third Loud Family configuration, now featuring Miller and Kessel alongside Alison Faith Levy on keyboards and drummer Gil Ray (an earlier Game Theory member). This edition of the group performed regularly, especially along the West Coast, and remained together for 2000’s Attractive Nuisance, on which they returned to their most organic and accessible sound since The Tape of Only Linda while retaining their idiosyncrasies. Despite favorable notices, the album became their weakest seller, prompting Miller to disband the Loud Family in 2001. In 2002 he compiled From Ritual to Romance, a live album drawn from 1996 and 1998 performances. He also indicated plans to step away from professional music, yet Aimee Mann soon announced an intended album collaboration. That project never materialized (though a live version of the Loud Family’s “Inverness” with Mann surfaced online), but Miller did complete a joint album with fellow songwriter Anton Barbeau, issued in 2006 as What If It Works? under the credit the Loud Family & Anton Barbeau. Miller passed away on April 15, 2013, at age 53. Beginning in 2014 Omnivore Recordings issued an extensive Game Theory reissue program that restored the full catalog in expanded editions. Although Omnivore had no plans for similar treatment of the Loud Family catalog, they did release an expanded edition of the Anton Barbeau collaboration What If It Works? in April 2022.