The Loud Family

By late 1991, Miller had formed the Loud Family, which began playing Bay Area clubs that year.[6]

Drummer Jozef Becker stayed on from the final 1989–1990 line-up of Game Theory; Becker had previously been a member of Thin White Rope, as well as Miller's earlier band Alternate Learning.[3]

Miller and Becker were joined by three members of This Very Window: guitarist Zachary Smith, keyboard player Paul Wieneke, and bassist R. Dunbar Poor, who had at various times been co-workers with Miller at Lucid Inc.[6][7] Miller had produced "For Beginners Only," a 12-inch single released by This Very Window in 1988.[8] He described Poor and Wieneke as "hypermusically educated guys from Stanford,"[9] noting that Wieneke had earned a Ph.D. in music there.[10]

Zachary Smith became lead guitarist for the Loud Family, with Miller moving to rhythm guitar until Smith's departure after The Tape of Only Linda (1994). Smith had appeared as a guest musician on Lolita Nation (1987), and had previously played guitar in a short-lived band with Donnette Thayer called No Matter What, before Thayer joined Game Theory.[9]

Miller stated that he had chosen not to use the name Game Theory out of deference to its past members, rather than "passing off this lineup as yet another Game Theory."[6] According to Poor, the members of This Very Window had each signed on individually to join Game Theory, and the group had rehearsed several times before Miller "decided that the energy and sound of the band was different enough to warrant a new name."[11][12]

The Loud Family was named after a real-life family that was the subject of the television documentary An American Family.[13] Miller later described the intended reality-show metaphor: "Going through life is a lot like having cameras on you and you have to perform, but there's no script; you just have to do the normal kind of bumbling thing. Besides, it had the word 'loud' in it."[13] Rolling Stone described the name as both "a hip allusion to the mid-Seventies PBS series" and "a clever way to describe the sound and feel of the band. Either way, it's a great hook – smart, funny and instantly memorable. All of which, appropriately enough, are qualities shared by Miller's songs."[14]

The Loud Family debuted on Alias Records in 1993 with Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things. The album was produced by Mitch Easter, who had produced Game Theory's records since 1986's The Big Shot Chronicles.[15]

According to the Los Angeles Times, the band's debut album (named after a phrase from America's song "A Horse with No Name") established the Loud Family as "critics' faves" upon its release.[16] Spin referred to the Loud Family as a more evolved version of Game Theory, with "a bunch of interspersed jangle and woof" and a "more guitar-heavy approach."[6]

Spin noted that "Miller's songs and voice are immediately identifiable. Interpersonal relationships are discussed in sweet, brusque terms."[6] According to Miller, those songs reflected a "depressing time" of his life, a three-year period in which "I'd lost my girlfriend ... and I'd lost my band. There was also a period where I got laid off from my job. I was hitting rock bottom, nothing was working out in my life at all. It seems like I was always in some state of trying to get things together, trying to get my situation out of some state of brokenness and hopelessness. I missed everything – I missed having a record deal and making records; I missed playing live."[12]

Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things was later acclaimed by Aimee Mann as "one of the five best records ever made"[17] and "a record that I listened to like a million times."[18]

A follow-up EP, Slouching Towards Liverpool, was released later in 1993. It included songs that had previously been recorded as demos by the final line-up of Game Theory, including Michael Quercio, in late 1989.[19]

The Tape of Only Linda (1994) took its name from a legendary bootleg concert recording of the isolated backup vocals of Paul McCartney's wife, Linda.

In 1995, Zachary Smith and R. Dunbar Poor left the band. Poor was replaced by bassist Kenny Kessel.

The band's 1996 release, Interbabe Concern, included the song "Don't Respond, She Can Tell," for which the band recorded a black-and-white music video inspired by Ernie Kovacs. While touring with Aimee Mann in support of the album, Miller told the Los Angeles Times that he was unwilling to compromise artistic purity in return for stardom and riches, but still hungered for an opportunity to make his living as a full-time musician.[16]

The Loud Family live at the Knitting Factory, New York, 2000. (L-R: Alison Faith Levy, Scott Miller, Kenny Kessel, Gil Ray)

The 1998 album Days for Days featured more line-up changes, with Gil Ray of Game Theory joining as drummer, and Alison Faith Levy on piano and keyboards, bringing a softer edge and more mature feel to the music. Describing Levy's contribution, Miller stated, "To me she brought in that classic 1967 to '74 way of doing piano pop–rock that I'm all in favor of but can't accomplish because I don't play piano. She had the most sheer musicianly keyboard chops of anyone I've played with. And her vocals are pretty distinctive. More toward the soul end of things than other female singers I've had in the band. So that line-up had more of a Todd Rundgren, Cat Stevens, Rod Argent, Carole King approach."[7]

The album Attractive Nuisance appeared in 2000, and was expected by Miller to be the final one for the group. After touring in 2000 in support of Attractive Nuisance, the band's recording contract with Alias Records expired.

Although the Loud Family took a six-year hiatus from recording for a variety of career and family related reasons, Miller signed with 125 Records during 2001. The independent recording label, then newly formed, was founded by Joe Mallon and Sue Trowbridge, who had a long acquaintance with Miller and his bands.[20][21] As its fifth release, 125 Records released a live CD by the Loud Family.[22]

From Ritual to Romance featured performances recorded live in San Francisco on October 5, 1996, and August 8, 1998, featuring band members Miller, Kessel, Levy, Ray, Wieneke, and Tittel, with guest vocals from Anton Barbeau. Three of the songs on this CD were covers ("Here Come the Warm Jets" by Brian Eno, "Debaser" by the Pixies, and "When You Sleep" by My Bloody Valentine).[23] Critic Brett Milano, writing in the Boston Phoenix, praised the band's "usual blend of finely crafted pop hooks, elusive yet resonant lyrics ... and more self-depreciation", citing the album's opening medley with "dark, ominous keyboards ... and a throat-shredding Miller vocal; it's the sound of a band who'd explode if they hadn't gotten to play those songs at that minute."[24] Scram magazine wrote that the live CD showed the band's "rough, antagonistic power ... which made the fundamental prettiness of the music seem more touching and fragile," calling the concluding songs "a closing salvo that left me breathless and punching the replay button."[23]

In 2003, the label released a concert tour documentary on DVD, Loud Family Live 2000.[25] The DVD, directed by Danny Plotnick, included live performances of 20 songs, along with band interviews and tour footage.[25]

Scott Miller was persuaded by 125 Records to record the 2006 CD What If It Works?, a final studio collaboration between Miller and Sacramento pop musician Anton Barbeau. Members of the Loud Family also contributed to the album, and at the label's request, the album was credited to "The Loud Family and Anton Barbeau," to avoid confusion between Miller and a similarly named country musician. The Sacramento Bee called the album "a mixture of sweet pop and jangly rock," as if "the Beatles were covered by the Replacements."[26] USA Today described it as a "terrific album... by one of underground pop-rock's best-kept secrets, the Loud Family."[27]

At the time of Miller's death in 2013, he had begun work on the album Supercalifragile, intending to revive the name Game Theory, rather than release it under the Loud Family name.[1] The album was completed after Miller's death by producer Ken Stringfellow and Miller's wife Kristine Chambers, who enlisted Miller's past bandmates and musical collaborators to turn Miller's incomplete set of recorded guitar and vocal tracks, sound notes, acoustic demos, and other materials into a finished album.[2] Miller had long intended the album to be a collaborative project; he had approached Stringfellow several years earlier, and had co-written one song with Aimee Mann and several with Stéphane Schück.[2]

The Loud Family's Jozef Becker, Gil Ray, and Alison Faith Levy participated in recording sessions for Supercalifragile in 2015 and 2016, which included a song co-written by Levy as a posthumous collaboration with Miller.[2] Other partially-completed Miller songs were posthumously co-written with Jon Auer, Doug Gillard, Ted Leo, Will Sheff, Anton Barbeau, and Stringfellow. The album was released in August 2017.[28]