[mp3] Impulse buying, poor sportsmanship, birth of multi-headed infant...

Game Theory - "The Waist And The Knees" (mp3)
The Loud Family - "My Free Ride" (mp3)

Scott Miller is one of my favorite songwriters, and the fact that this makes it harder for me to talk about him, not easier, may be a sign that music writing is not actually the pastime for me.

"The Waist And The Knees" ends side 1 of Game Theory's Lolita Nation, which seemed ancient and desperately obscure when I first heard it, a whole six years after its 1987 release. Now I'm older than Scott Miller was when he wrote it-- an unnerving realization, since the album is about adulthood and still feels wiser than I find myself to be. But then, if you're good at writing oblique lyrics, you can probably make a lot of people feel that way. This is also the biggest rock song in Game Theory's catalog.

"My Free Ride", on the other hand, is completely inessential, an outtake never properly released. I suspect that's because it never had better lyrics than these generic relationship tropes. (But what does the title mean?) Anyway, it also features a chord change in the chorus that kills me every time, and a melody that makes it clear why most Loud Family fans like the New Pornographers so much.