What If It Works?
Omnivore, 2022
8/10
This final album from Scott Miller’s Bay Area outfit The Loud Family sees the reissue treatment here, where 11 bonus tracks accompany the original from 2006, as Anton Barbeau’s contributions help illuminate the irresistible pop tunes.
“Rocks Off” starts the listen with charming and immediately memorable pop melodies in the bright and powerful delivery, and “Song About ‘Rocks Off’” follows with an intially calmer but no less interesting landscape of warmly strummed acoustic guitar and a bit of folk-pop.
Further along, “Remember You” uses strategic vocal layering amid the playful keys, while “Mavis Of Maybelline Towers” bounces and shakes with a timeless power-pop formula that you just can’t sit still to. The title track ends the formal disc with a bit of a jangle alongside precise drumming in a very charming sort of way.
The majority of the record is bonus tracks, including the dreamy “Don’t Bother Me While I’m Living Forever”, which and was on the original release, and “Rise Of The Chokehold Princess”, which is a bare, acoustic track that illustrates the depths of Miller’s song craft.
The bonus material is mostly demo versions of songs from the album, and it’s quite fun to experience these tracks in their infancy, and see how much they were developed for the final cuts.
If you weren’t around or paying attention during The Loud Family’s heyday, this is a great place to start exploring one of the most commercially overlooked outfits from the ‘90s and early 2000’s, who penned scrappy and catchy tunes that will forever be relevant.
Travels well with: Richard X Heyman- Copious Notes; Holsapple & Stamey- Our Back Pages