Word: spill
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...goes well, there can be something very satisfying about studying for exams. Not taking them, of course--even if you're prepared, trying to spill out a semester's worth of material in three hours almost always disappoints. But studying for exams forces you to review (or, for us lazy folks, to read for the first time) the coursework and to see what exactly you have learned. And then you relize that the whole point of exams is not to make you sum up the entire course, or filter it down into the three major things worth knowing. (That...
...Built to Spill legend starts back in the early '90s in beautiful and scenic Boise, Idaho. Somewhere between potato farms and militia members, Boise managed to churn out Doug Martsch, leader and resident guitar god of Built to Spill. First came Ultimate Alternative Wavers, a perplexing title for a perplexing album. A dense and jagged slice of paranoid pop, the album only hinted at the musical mazes that were yet to pour out of Martsch's head...
...When Martsch announced he had finished Built to Spill's sophomore album, everyone expected the long, languished and sometime lost guitar heroics that had dominated the first release. Once again, more hype for the band to prove wrong. With There's Nothing Wrong with Love, Martsch set his sights at pure pop bliss captured in the moments of everyday life...
...Fast forward to 1999: critics have finally learned their lesson and didn't even attempt to speculate at what Built to Spill's most recent release, Keep It Like a Secret would bring to the table. Keeping in character, this album turned out to be the one everyone should have been expecting. A combination of the pop of There's Nothing Wrong and the grandeur of Perfect, Martsch's latest manifesto of sound smoothes the edges but loses none of its weight...
...moral of the Built to Spill story? There is none. At least not one I can tell you. Live, the band veers from one violently brilliant extreme to another. Some shows tumble into unbelievable 30-minute long jams on b-sides of singles released five years ago. Others are made up of drop-dead perfect sonic recreations of the album, filled out with the intensity of Martsch flailing at his guitar before your eyes. Then again, Martsch has probably completely rewritten the Built to Spill playbook by now, just to keep us critics on our toes. The only...