'Loud Family' Week 3 of '50 New to Me'

Loud Family - Interbabe Concern
1996
Recommended by Dem McCarthy

At it's heart this album seems to be almost equal parts homage and parody of a cavalcade of alt-rock icons from over decades. From the psychedelic rock side of the 60's through the quirky alternative 80's up to the grungy 90's this album melds them all together. Vocally I think Scott Miller shares the most similarity, at least in tonality, with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, but at turns he seems to funnel the spirit of everyone from the Beatles & Bowie to Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips) or even Shannon Hoon (Blind Melon) to name a few. He doesn't sound like any of these people it is more like the cadence he uses evokes the memory of them.

Musically the band does the same sort of thing, you can be in mindset 'strawberry fields' one minute and a flannel ridden grunge fest the next. I think the heaviest sound similarity comes down to a Sonic Youth meets Flaming Lips sort of feel. They are a tad bit on the experimental side, but they always keep it in some semblance of check. Their experiments rarely wander into the far left field of the musically bizarre, it is more like they walk up to the fence and have a nice pleasant picnic next to left field.

RIP Gil Ray, Loud Family's drummer, who passed yesterday 1/24/17

Into the Rotation -
This album is more than the sum of its parts. It is better taken as a whole rather than pulling a song or two out, as such it is an album I may throw on every now and then when the mood strikes. (Though on that note I did feel that the album, at 18 songs, was a few songs longer than it needed to be.)