CONCERT REVIEW: Loud Family, TT The Bear's/Boston
- Chelsea Spear
After producing a challenging musical epic in the form of Interbabe Concern, smart popster Scott Miller unleashed a more streamlined pop vision for 1998 in the form of his band - the Loud Family - on their latest album, Days for Days (Alias). The question remained -- how would this vehicle for pop songs that moved your cerebral cortex as surely as they shook your ass translate on stage?
The answer beautifully manifested itself on a hot summer night inside a cavernous night club just outside Boston's city limits. Not surprisingly, the new songs acclimated themselves well outside the studio, given the band's more organic, live-in-the-studio approach with Days. Even the between-song bits on the album were given new life on stage, coming out from their role of providing the previous track with a new perspective to become full-fledged, if short, tunes. The band instead took its trademark off-kilter approach to reinterpreting their back catalouge, including a drastically reinvented version of "Sword Swallower" from their first album, whose loping beat and call-and-response backup vocals suggested a Pavement influence. The presence of new keyboardist and backup vocalist Alison Faith Levy promised further archival treats, including a souped-up version of "Here It Is Tomorrow" and an energetic rendition of "Room For One More, Honey".
Indeed, "energetic" could have been the password for the evening. The band had presence to spare, and their enthusiasm about playing and passion for the music they make was infectious. Miller's nerdy-boy-as-rock-star approach to the role of frontman seemed to be a role many of the earnest indie-boys in the audience would love to play, but he backed up his arena-dude posing with substance and craft to spare. Levy's presence was also welcome -- her go-go dancing behind the keyboard brought a smile to many audience members' faces, and probably launched a thousand crushes. The band as a whole were tight and cohesive, doing justice to the songs' tricky arrangements and bringing them into a glorious new light.
Local popsters the Pills opened the show with their retro-melodic thing. Their tunes are catchier than the bubonic plague, their lyrics dumb fun, their stage presence amusing and enthusiastic, and their haircuts cool. Certainly they seem excited about what they do in a very genuine way, as opposed to the smug stage personas of fellow power-pop acts Bunnygrunt and the Push Kings, but their music isn't interesting enough to warrant as more than sonic wallpaper.
