Real Nighttime

Recording personnel

Real Nighttime was the last of Game Theory's albums to be recorded by the band's Davis, California-based line-up, a quartet fronted by Scott Miller on guitar and lead vocals. According to rock critic Mark Deming, "while Miller was clearly the leader of this band, the outstanding percussion work from Dave Gill, the evocative keyboards from Nan Becker, and the solid, propulsive bass of Fred Juhos played an invaluable role in making these songs work."

Touring personnel

The original recording line-up commenced a national tour for Real Nighttime in October 1984, but before the album's 1985 release, the group went through a wholesale change in personnel, with only Miller remaining.

By early 1985, Miller relocated to San Francisco together with future Game Theory member Donnette Thayer, where he assembled a new line-up in the San Francisco Bay Area, featuring Shelley LaFreniere on keyboards, Gil Ray on drums, and Suzi Ziegler on bass. The newly formed San Francisco version of Game Theory began a new tour in 1985 in support of the Real Nighttime album, on which none of them (except Miller) had appeared. During a break in the Real Nighttime tour, this line-up recorded Game Theory's 1986 album, The Big Shot Chronicles.

Reviews and critical reception

Real Nighttime was well-reviewed, appearing in the Village Voice's annual poll of 1984's best releases. According to rock critic Martin Strong, the album established Game Theory as a "contender in the Paisley Underground power pop stakes."

Music journalist Byron Coley wrote in 1985 that it was "the actual godhead pop LP o' the American Eighties. No shit. This is it." Spin listed Real Nighttime in January 1990 as one of its "80 Excellent Records of the 80s," alongside Coley's description of the album as an "overwhelming swirl of post-Big Star heroin pop."

In 2001's All Music Guide: The Definitive Guide to Popular Music, critic Mark Deming wrote that Real Nighttime showed "Scott Miller was maturing into one of the finest and most distinctive pop songwriters in America." Deming continued, "Always tuneful, and by turns rollicking and heart-breaking, Real Nighttime was the album that announced Game Theory as one of the major talents to emerge from California's Paisley Underground scene."

Trouser Press called the music "tougher and more unpredictable" than related bands such as Let's Active and The Three O'Clock, citing "jagged guitar lines, ominous percussion and noisy sound effects... creating an odd but often productive tension" that undercut pop conventions.

In the book Lost in the Grooves, the album was critically viewed as walking "a fine line between pretension and genius," with the former view supported by Miller's liner notes written in the style of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and the latter view supported by "chiming guitars and great pop melodies" described as "breathtaking." The book cited Miller's "brilliant tunesmithing," and identified Real Nighttime as the album in which the group proved themselves capable of fully realizing the "sense of ambition and high concept" suggested in their earlier work.

Film director Andrew Bujalski, in New York Magazine, cited Real Nighttime among his top 20 influences, stating in 2013 that he had been shaken by Scott Miller's then-recent death: "[Miller] had this complex relationship with his lack of fame, but somehow the fact that his bands never made it big seemed like part of why they stayed great. They just did great work for twenty-some years. Lolita Nation is probably their most beloved album, but song for song, I’ll take Real Nighttime over it. He was always bursting with ideas as a songwriter, and it feels absolutely effortless on this record."

According to Deming, in an updated 2015 review for AllMusic, "Game Theory made good records right out of the starting gate, but Real Nighttime was where they proved they could make truly great ones, and it's not just one of the band's finest works, it's a watershed work in '80s paisley underground pop."

In liner notes for the reissue, Byron Coley called the album "a pinnacle of Scott's early days.... For all its surface flash, it's an album that rewards deep listening." Coley expressed his hope that the album would remain in circulation "so youngsters can unravel its beautiful mysteries."

Jersey Beat concluded that in Real Nighttime, "[a]ll the elements were in place for something special to occur – a master songwriter at the height of his powers, a stellar supporting cast and a like minded producer in Mitch Easter to capture it all for posterity. The end result is nothing short of a masterpiece." The reissue was cited as "a real labor of love for all involved" with excellent sound quality and informative packaging.

Reviewing the 2015 reissue, Blurt wrote that "the easy blend of classic and modern gives Real Nighttime a sound that's more timeless than dated," calling the album's sound "fresh then, and timely now, as more modern bands rediscover the synth patches of yesteryear." Examples included the "nearly invisible Simmons drum pads used throughout," as well as "Nan Becker's wacked-out synth licks" in the song "Curse of the Frontier Land," which the reviewer found to "enhance, rather than distract from, its jangly power pop crunch."

Track listing

All tracks written by Scott Miller, except as noted.

Credits

Members:

Guest musicians:

On 1993 CD only: