Info
- Artist:: Game Theory
- Album:: Lolita Nation
- Year:: 1986
- Label:: Enigma
- Catalog:: STB-73280
Track Ratings
| # | Title | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | Kenneth, What’s the Frequency? | ★ |
| A2 | Not Because You Can | ★★ |
| A3 | Shard | ★ |
| A4 | Go Ahead, You’re Dying To | ★ |
| A5 | Dripping With Looks | ★★ |
| A6 | Exactly What We Don’t Want to Hear | ★ |
| A7 | We Love You Carol and Alison | ★★ |
| A8 | The Waist and the Knees | ★★ |
| B1 | Nothing New | ★★ |
| B2 | The World’s Easiest Job | |
| B3 | Look Away | ★★ |
| B4 | Slip | ★ |
| B5 | The Real Sheila | |
| B6 | Andy in Ten Years | ★★ |
| C1 | Watch Who You’re Calling Space Garbage, Meteor Mouth | |
| C2 | Where They Have to Let You In | ★ |
| C3 | Turn Me on Dead Man | ★ |
| C4 | Mammoth Gardens | ★★ |
| C5 | Little Ivory | ★★ |
| C6 | Museum of Hopelessness | ★ |
| C7 | Toby Ornette | ★ |
| C8 | All Clockwork | ★ |
| C9 | One More for Saint Michael | |
| C10 | Choose Between Two Sons | ★★ |
| D1 | Chardonnay | ★★ |
| D2 | Last Day That We’re Young | ★★ |
| D3 | Together Now, Very Minor | ★★★★ |
Log
2015-06-27
i really hope this turns out to be moon disaster tier. i want it to be, it sounds like it has everything i love, and it took me an hour to find a way to download it.
★ the opening solo on not because you can is promising.
★ go ahead you’re dying to
★ the synth sonar on dripping with looks was cool. and there’s something about its atmosphere which is difficult to put into words.
★ we love you carol and alison. not sure why. as a pop song song it’s not traditionally satisfying at all. like each melodic phrase was written up and stapled to the last one.
★★ the waist and the knees. i could’ve mentally hyped myself into a frenzy, but i do feel like i’m listening to something special. but for the life of me i cannot pin down why.
★★ and the hook and rephrasing of it in nothing new is cool
★ look away
andy in ten years isn’t too bad either.
★ watch who you’re calling space garbage
and then we’re back into metrically confounding territory.
★ turn me on dead man
★★ mammoth gardens’s build to twist. like shit. that payoff is brilliant.
★ little ivory, museum of hopelessness
★ all clockwork and no bodily fluids. it works pretty well.
one more for saint michael is unusually sparse. but it doesn’t sound that way until you notice it.
★ choose between two sons
★ chardonnay. yeah so that’s what i’m going with. if you don’t pay attention it’s just sort of a bland album. it doesn’t really throw you too many hooks beyond what it feels is obligatory. but at the same time it isn’t overtly proggily esoteric for the most part. it’s just a bit off. but then once you start digging into the mechanics of how it’s off, it becomes rewarding in that way.
★★ last day that we’re young, especially when the key change to delayed resolution hits. but also that riff is all sorts of great
★ also what’s behind together now very minor?
so this isn’t exactly what i was expecting. like i was imagining something along the lines of a dream poppier zen arcade, whereas this is more like works for everything translated to rock. still, i think that might be a good thing.
2015-07-04
with lyric sheet this time!
★★ not because you can now. nothing sounds quite like these guitars. it’s somehow rough. inexplicably lo-fi.
★ shard. with go ahead it almost makes a complementary song
★★ dripping with looks and i think it’s coming together. (also i think this could be a cousin to how my lyrical style would turn out were i so inclined)
we love you carol and alison: even the opening 4 is twisted. 3 and 4 should be mostly the same or at least that 7b shouldn’t be there.
wait shit is nothing new about corporation meets girl? or something. that “we” is suspicious.
★★ look away’s ending makes the song
★ slip
the real sheila’s melody is confounding. what is its logic? (his sense of melody in general is interesting). oh and verse chorus instrumental chorus verse chorus. it’s just off enough to be weird.
(also these intonations of consumerism as almost a mental illness?)
★ ok andy in ten years is funny.
where they have to let you in isn’t too bad. there’s an a part a b part a c part and a loop back. it’s just that they have no logical connection to each other. it’s like hearing linus and lucy for the first time and when it hits its b part you’re like wait. what does this have to do with the opening?
and i’m not sure why he doesn’t decide to forego the end chorus entirely. he’s had plenty of chances to.
(and herein lies the secret: this isn’t fucking for the sake of fucking. there is an internal logic to everything he’s doing. there is form and structure and rules. they’re just foreign to what we’ve been raised on. like a dialect of pop)
★★ little ivory
oh a lot of the microcollection is from earlier recordings. so it sounds exactly like you’re skipping back through the cd to get to your favorite song! that’s super cheeky.
★★ chardonnay
(notice that the ends are never chopped. cuts always happen in the middle)
does last day that we’re young have two choruses?
2015-07-14
i think the itunes era kinda ruined the magic. like a lot of side a relies on constantly faking you out. shard starts out and it sorta fools you but its premature abort is not surprising. whereas go ahead you’re dying to sounds like a legitimate next track until dripping with looks pushes it aside. it fools you twice and succeeds, except if you see the track accompanied by a 0:38 beforehand.
★★ we love you carol and alison
and the waist and the knees is easily a top 100 best songs of forever contender.
★ the world’s easiest job and a decade where you could use the word retard in public. it might be ok since the pejorative is aimed at him and meant to be shitty? so hopefully it’s a 1987 relic.
so the real sheila was one of their only singles (along with erica’s word which is fantastic). i don’t get it. it’s the only major song i’ve yet to warm up to and its creepy undertone of possessiveness isn’t helping.
★★ andy in ten years
★ wait is where they have to let you in supposed to parody not because you can’s indecisive intro?
ok so side c reverses polarity with its fakeouts. from the very start, museum of hopelessness sounds like a gag song, and so you expect toby ornette to be the other 0:39 throwaway. nope! it just keeps going on.
god little ivory’s “never!” is so great.
wait, is the all clockwork text bomb there so they can fill the back cover with a giant brick? like you’re getting a double album and this is what that means!
(which makes it a musical gag that exists for the print it generates)
★★ choose between two sons. it’s fun
apparently chardonnay was a victim of redbook limits, and was intended to be much longer with more verses. i don’t know how much longer, but side d runs seven minutes shorter than any of the others. i’m guessing he chose parity over his dreams.
★★ together now, very minor is a fitting ending to this whole thing.
maybe the other part of game theory’s magic is precisely that it defies memory. so it always feels fresh.
because it says something that this album doesn’t fatigue me one bit.
2024-07-12
★★★★ together now, very minor
watermoon (prayer): 11 Jul 2024 10:10 am
for some reason i’ve been thinking about scott miller again. he’s always been a figure who i’ve wanted to love more than i actually could. he’s smart and trying to be smart, clever and trying to be clever, but all in a way where the end result comes off not as obnoxious but as, um, inscrutable. he contorts his melodies until they sound like the equivalent of when you rewrite a joke so many times that it’s only funny if you remember the previous iterations, he writes lyrics that seem more designed to be dissected for years afterward than sung along to, he’s trying so hard to make art out of rock music about girls and that’s admirable and relatable.
this is the closer on his double album that’s only a little bit about him moping over giving his life to the music industry and not getting the return on investment that he expected. and even though there are more bombastic and “produced” songs on here, this might be my favorite. the guitar that sounds like it was ran through a leslie, the way his airy voice hangs over the already-thin mix, the melodic line of the chorus that breaks my brain… it’s all so gorgeous.
(lyrically he’s kinda writing his own death one album, a band change, a career change, and a published book before the real one happened, but i think that’s just a common temptation for a certain kind of artist)
Notes
2020-02-18: in event of moon disaster v2
i’d love to meet the “her” the songs sing about. i bet she’s really something. i bet she looks like the others.
i’d love to sing my praises to the pretty object girl. the one that never really exists but is also immortal because of it. the angel, the centerfold, the body pillow… i’d love to have some fun with miku.