Description

Wonderful fifth and final album from Game Theory, a set of songs that are at once complex and immediate. Scott Miller had a knack for that, with Game Theory and The Loud Family....these songs work on many levels, they get you with their melodies and engage (sometimes challenge) with their unique lyrics. The production of Mitch Easter (Let's Active) is always a plus, and the band is fantastic, including members of the soon to come Loud Family and secret weapon (if weapons only brought goodness) Donette Thayer (Hex, solo, etc). More about it in the review below. Enjoy! All Music review Arriving in 1987, Lolita Nation was Game Theory's masterpiece, a strikingly ambitious and accomplished exercise in power pop at its smartest. But it was also a purposely difficult double album, and it did little to boost the group's somewhat precarious career status. For Game Theory's fifth LP, group leader and songwriter Scott Miller set out to make something more user-friendly, and 1988's 2 Steps from the Middle Ages reflected a more streamlined approach, stripping away some of the more baroque elements from the tunes, abandoning the aural montage that had become a major part of the group's approach, and delivering a relatively concise 13-song set. There was also a bit more gloss in Mitch Easter's production than in his previous work with the band, and tunes like "Wyoming," "In a Delorean," "Rolling with the Moody Girls," and "What the Whole World Wants" sound like they could have found a comfortable spot on college radio, if not mainstream FM outlets. However, 2 Steps manages to play like a compromise in the best sense of the world -- it's a far easier album for a beginner to slip into than Lolita Nation or Real Nighttime, but it still boasts plenty of superb songs from Miller, and the band carries this material with impressive strength, especially Gil Ray's drumming and Shelley LaFreniere's keyboards. And on the second half of the album, Miller lets his dour, literate personality shine bright on "Don't Entertain Me Twice," "Throwing the Election," and "Initiations Week," which rank with his best songs. 2 Steps from the Middle Ages proved to be Game Theory's final album, and it's hard not to wish they'd allowed their grand finale to flaunt the group's eccentricities. But think of it as their answer to the Velvet Underground's Loaded, a superb example of a challenging band playing nice without throwing away the smarts and ideas that made them worthwhile. follow up review The AllMusic reviewer on the whole gets it right, but I must take exception to the digs against guitarist/vocalist Donnette Thayer. Her two main songwriting contributions to the previous release ("Lolita Nation") were perfectly in line, quality wise, with most of the album, even if they didn't quite reach the heights of a handful of Scott Miller's best efforts from that album. And she was the strongest of the female harmony singers Scott employed in various editions of the band over the years, so to dismiss her voice as "helium-pitched" seems like he's got an ax to grind for some reason. Aside from that quibble, he correctly identifies "Two Steps..." as perhaps Game Theory's strongest overall effort, song for song, even if it's nowhere near as ambitious as it's celebrated, sprawling predecessor.