Game Theory Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
While Game Theory had released three EPs between 1982 and 1984, their first full-length album, Real Nighttime, was where the band truly found their voice on vinyl. With Mitch Easter on board as producer, the band was finally working with a sympathetic craftsman who knew how to make the most of the band's sound, and Scott Miller was maturing into one of the finest and most distinctive pop songwriters in America. While Game Theory's most obvious influence was certainly Big Star (the album even features a cover of "You Can't Have Me" that sounds slightly more deranged than the original), Real Nighttime's loose narrative suggested a mid-'80s smart-pop update of Pet Sounds, as it followed a young man from blissful innocence on "24" to crushing romantic defeat on "I Turned Her Away." Always tuneful, and by turns rollicking and heartbreaking, Real Nighttime was the album that announced Game Theory as one of the major talents to emerge from California's Paisley Underground scene. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
'Two Steps From the Middle Ages'
Release Date 1/1/1988
Tracks 13
Label Enigma
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Many fans of 1987's sprawling and often bizarre masterwork Lolita Nation felt that 1988's comparatively concise and straightforward Two Steps From the Middle Ages was a step backward for Scott Miller and company. Listened to on its own merits, however, Two Steps is clearly one of Game Theory's finest efforts and an entirely worthy follow-up to Lolita Nation. Squeezing that album's love for odd sounds and unexpected musical detours into a 13-song stretch of relatively "normal" pop song structures, this is a musically and lyrically satisfying album with none of the filler that marks earlier records like The Big Shot Chronicles. Guitarist Donnette Thayer's helium-pitched harmony vocals are better integrated into the songs than they had been on Lolita Nation, and her lead on "Wyoming" is her best vocal performance ever. (It helps that, unlike her wretched contributions to Lolita Nation, that album's only flaws, she didn't write the song.) The songs are uniformly terrific, with at least half a dozen all-time Game Theory classics, including the opening "Room for One More, Honey"; led by Gil Ray's walloping drums and featuring two intertwining vocal lines on the chorus by Thayer and keyboardist Shelley LaFreniere, this song pulls off the difficult trick of being simultaneously mid-tempo and hyperactive. Other gems include the delightful "Rolling With the Moody Girls," with its "Baker Street"-like sax interjections, and the brilliant "Throwing the Election," chosen as Miller's best song ever in an online fan poll. This turned out to be Game Theory's final album, as Thayer left the group and Ray was seriously injured in a mugging shortly after the album's release, leading to a period of personnel instability that eventually led to the group's dissolution in 1990. It's a shame, as a similarly strong follow-up to Two Steps From the Middle Ages could have put Game Theory one step closer to escaping the nearly total oblivion they operated in for most of their career. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Game Theory leader Scott Miller has never made much of a secret of his fondness for Big Star, but while Real Nighttime favored the sound of #1 Record and The Big Shot Chronicles suggested the harder-edged tone of Radio City, Lolita Nation sounded like Game Theory's variation on the themes of Big Star's masterfully damaged swan song, Third/Sister Lovers. Certainly Game Theory's most ambitious album, Lolita Nation was a two-LP set that combined some of Miller's most user-friendly power pop with dark, moody ruminations on betrayal, failed love, and mortality, bursts of avant-garde noise, and fragments of unclassifiable studio doodling, all thrown into a sonic Cuisinart through Miller's aggressive use of aural montage. Lolita Nation is more than a bit disorienting on first listen, though it finds the band playing at the top of their form on challenging material (new guitarist Donnete Thayer makes an impressive debut), and there are more than a few flat-out brilliant tracks (such as "Chardonnay," "The Waist and the Knees," and "The Real Shelia") alongside such head-scratchers as "Turn Me on Dead Man," "Watch Who You're Calling Space Garbage Meteor Mouth," and the 22nd track (which stubbornly defies titling). Taken as a whole and given time to fully absorb, Lolita Nation is probably Game Theory's finest and most impressive album, though it's also the worst place for a beginner to start examining their work. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Scott Miller broke in a new Game Theory lineup on The Big Shot Chronicles (a revolving-door cast of musicians was something he would get used to over the next decade or so), and if the album lacks the narrative cohesion of the group's first full-length effort, Real Nighttime, it's obvious from the album's first cut that the addition of Shelley LaFrenier on keyboards, Suzi Ziegler on bass, and Gil Ray on drums made Game Theory a stronger band in every respect. While Game Theory's attempts to rock out on Real Nighttime sometimes sounded a bit tentative, The Big Shot Chronicles reveals a band that's equally adept at flexing their muscles ("I've Tried Subtlety" and "Make Any Vows") or easing into a song's subtleties ("Regenisraen" and "Like a Girl Jesus"). As a songwriter, Scott Miller continued to grow ("Erica's Word" and "Don't Look Too Closely" are both smart pop heaven on Earth), and while he's fond of referring to his voice as a "miserable whine," he sure knows how to make it communicate. Finally, Mitch Easter's production guides the record through moody neo-psychedelia and up-tempo hard pop with an equally sure hand; the record sounds just as good as the band plays. A superb set from one of the best (and most underappreciated) bands of the 1980s. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
