Built To Spill: The Normal Years

BUILT TO SPILL: THE NORMAL YEARS (1993-1995; 1996)

1) So & So So & So From Wherever Wherever; 2) Shortcut; 3) Car; 4) Some Things Last A Long Time; 5) Girl; 6) Joyride; 7) Some; 8) Sick & Wrong; 9) Still Flat; 10) Terrible/Perfect.

I will keep this very brief. Most likely, had this compilation not appeared way back in 1996, when the band was still young and fresh and a few steps away from Big Critical Recognition, it would not have appeared today — too slight, way too slight. This one really just mops up some singles, outtakes, and alternate versions of tracks from the first couple of albums, most of them being merely of historical interest. The only general argument in favor of the album might be that the sound is more «raw» and lo-fi on the whole, which is hardly surprising but also hardly intentional: these are, indeed, unpolished versions, but mainly because the band did not yet have the time or the skills to polish them.

Actually, I guess the only two songs worth specific mention are the two non-LP A-sides. ʽJoy­rideʼ is an unusually speedy folk-rocker in the vein of Tom Petty's ʽAmerican Girlʼ, with some nicely crunchy distorted guitar howling high above the folksy rhythm strum, a few cute stop-and-start moments, and a hilarious buzz of overdubbed lead parts in the outro — probably the closest they came in those early years (or ever, for that matter) to simplistic innocent rock'n'roll. And the oddly titled ʽSo & So So...ʼ is a good example of Martsch's experimental spirit ("so, instead of just taking this two-chord riff and recording a punk song, we will add a droning serpentine me­lody on top of it and record an art rock song"), although the gray, drab chorus with the usual "vocals coming out of the guitar's ass" principle is still a disappointment.

As a curio, there is a cover of a tune by madman extraordinaire Daniel Jonston (ʽSome Things Last A Long Timeʼ), where the key point is that midway through, this slow, leisurely, contempla­tive ballad is ripped apart by a tornado-like lead guitar part, yet the tempo, the general arrange­ment, and the vocals do not shift one bit, and eventually the «tornado» just whooshes away and disappears — you may take this as a symbolic reminder that "some things last a long time" in­deed, but a tornado is not one of them. There's also a track called ʽShortcutʼ that runs for just a minute and a half (which probably earned it its name) — a most unusual thing for Martsch, who was always brevity's worst enemy.

Overall, this one's truly only for big fans and completists. It does wrap all the odds and ends up nicely, reflecting Built To Spill's passion for meticulousness — so many indie bands are so careless, after all, about leaving their singles and EPs out of print — but accuracy per se is not enough for me to hand out a certified thumbs up here.

Built To Spill: Untethered Moon

BUILT TO SPILL: UNTETHERED MOON (2015)

1) All Our Songs; 2) Living Zoo; 3) On The Way; 4) Some Other Song; 5) Never Be The Same; 6) C.R.E.B.; 7) Another Day; 8) Horizon To Cliff; 9) So; 10) When I'm Blind.

Six years is a long time for youngsters, but not so much for aging rockers — and anyway, the world's demand for new Built To Spill albums had been fairly low even when they were in their prime, so we can certainly excuse Doug Martsch for taking six years off to think whether he still has anything worth saying. We can also excuse him for «spilling» all of the band members and finally recording this new album with an entirely new team — because, let's face it, who but the most dedicated veterans even remember the names of the guys in the rhythm section? (Okay, I remember Scott Plouf, because «Plouf» is hilariously phonosymbolic).

Anyway, if you hoped that a six year break would transform Doug Martsch into some completely different musical entity — that he would take that time to learn to rap or to play in Miley Cyrus' backing band or, at least, to enroll in a Juilliard cello class — Untethered Moon will very quick­ly quash those hopes. The good news is that it is at least a major improvement on There Is No Enemy, with most of the songs showing an energy level that is quite close to You In Reverse, and a few of them even being memorable, or genuinely epic, or epic and memorable. Most im­portantly, Martsch is starting to remember how to combine intellectualism with ass-kicking, and even with hook-making every once in a while.

Take a song like ʽC.R.E.B.ʼ — whose title, I suppose, is short for ʽcAMP Response Element-Building Proteinʼ, and shows that Doug Martsch has a molecular biology textbook at his dis­posal and is not afraid to use it. The lyrics are about long term memory and our dependence on it, but there is a memorable (at least in the short term) riff attached to the song as well, and a strange one at that — a sort of reggae-jazz-pop mix, echoey and sharp, laying the foundation for a pretty hard-hitting track on the whole; and it's a good thing when you cannot bring yourself to decide what is more impressive — that the song is a massive ode to "your hippocampus" or that it fea­tures plenty of moody, captivating guitar tricks.

The fast tempos are also back, starting right off the bat with ʽAll Our Songsʼ, an explosive six-minute romp with Martsch not afraid to let his hair down and let loose with a generic, but trans­fixing rock'n'roll solo towards the end (a bit too short, unfortunately; however, the middle set of overdubs, where several guitars or guitar tones engage in a mutually offensive dia- or quadrilog, is equally impressive in its own way). Eventually, the record comes full circle when ʽWhen I'm Blindʼ brings the fast tempo back for the closing explosion — and this time, with a very lengthy and very drone-influenced lead guitar passage, almost as if in tribute to ʽSister Rayʼ, except this one is probably not all that improvised. But no matter, it's still one of the best series of passionate guitar trills I've heard in a long, long time.

Ultimately, the best thing about Untethered Moon is not the melodies and not the invitation to decode more of Doug Martsch's philosophical messages — it is the understanding that the man is back in his experimental mood, on the search for all sorts of new sounds that he can extract from the six-string. Or, rather, contextually bound sounds — there is a lot of that here, as, for instance, in the last two lines of ʽLiving Zooʼ, where he sings "cause we're lions in our cages / And tigers in tiny spaces" and the guitar gives out a ferociously distorted wah-wah growl right after the word "tigers" — notice that? It's hard not to notice. It's all about these minor touches of creativity these days, rather than grand breakthroughs — but God bless him for these, really.

Some of the songs are still fillerish, for sure, but even those that do not properly register can still be saved by one touch or other — ʽSoʼ, for instance, seems to be fairly uninspired, but the Neil Young-like hyper-distorted guitar tone makes it bone-crunching at top volume; and ʽOn The Wayʼ, a song about overpopulation as a reason for space colonization, has this odd music-hall mid-section, where Doug and his backup echoes chant "Maltesian riot, Maltesian riot" as if they were the Kinks in the middle of a devastating sociological discovery; it's a bit hilarious, but it redeems the tune which is rather lackluster otherwise.

So, overall, this should probably be considered an upward turn of the curve — again, with the usual disclaimer that «all Built To Spill albums sound the same» taken into account, but proving that it is too early to write Doug Martsch off as yet another spent/useless residue of the Nineties alt-rock era; at the very least, Untethered Moon is no less generally enjoyable than any «hot» new release by any aspiring young whippersnapper. Not that anybody should hold out much hope: based on the pattern established by Doug in the past 15 years, his next record should be about as exciting as contemporary Smashing Pumpkins. But that might take another decade or so to pro­duce, and in the meantime, here's a thumbs up for this particular presentation of one man's musi­cally enhanced views on the sorry state and uncertain perspectives of humanity.

Built To Spill: There Is No Enemy

BUILT TO SPILL: THERE IS NO ENEMY (2009)

1) Aisle 13; 2) Hindsight; 3) Nowhere Lullaby; 4) Good Ol' Boredom; 5) Life's A Dream; 6) Oh Yeah; 7) Pat; 8) Done; 9) Plating Seeds; 10) Things Fall Apart; 11) Tomorrow.

God, how tedious. Somehow, on their seventh LP Built To Spill preserve the relative simplicity and accessibility of You In Reverse, but lose that album's momentum. No more fast rockers, no more colorful power-pop, no more tense pulsating melancholic vibes like there were in ʽTracesʼ. Instead, we get another set of largely interchangeable, monotonous mid-tempo alt-rock tunes, everything about which is predictable — if there is yet another leaf unturned in the personal log­book of Doug Martsch, There Is No Emeny ain't in no hurry to turn it over.

Maybe that's what Doug Martsch thinks, too, because what else would lead him to naming one of the songs ʽGood Ol' Boredomʼ? Yes, indeed, "it's nice but it's not that exciting", as he sings after the lead guitar line, curiously reminiscent of the fanfare riff in Yes' ʽAnd You And Iʼ, has been silenced to let in our friendly, slightly effeminate singer. And as if in support of that, he returns to his old favorite way of mumbling the vocals, while all the guitars are equally muted, with this irritating «muffled» mix that isn't exactly lo-fi, yet still creates the illusion of a thick screen be­tween yourself and the music, which is never a good thing, really.

But it is hardly the worsened production that is the record's biggest problem — no, it is the lazy, paralyzed songwriting, where you get track after track of generic folk-rock chord progressions and weakly Beatlesque vocal harmonies (ʽLife's A Dreamʼ) that feel deeply derivative, totally familiar, and mining those mines that are already completely depleted. In fact, at least half of these tracks, I am sure, exist only as sonic pads for the next in a series of Doug Martsch's Really Important Metaphysical Thoughts, such as: "And if God does exist / I am sure he will forgive / Me for doubting him / For he'd see / How unlikely he / Made himself seem". I once said some­thing like that at dinner, too, but I never thought about making it into a song — who knows, may­be I'd have been able to come up with something better than ʽOh Yeahʼ, a lumbering dinosaur strolling along a path of power chords.

What's even worse, this record drags on for almost an hour: eleven songs, stretched out to what seems like infinity, and all of them so similar to each other that it is no wonder most reviews of the album I've seen concentrate on the lyrics, trying to decode Martsch's cryptic messages to the world. Or maybe not so cryptic — I mean, there's nothing too cryptic about "The more you have to live for / The more you love your life / The harder it will be for you to die / And we all want dying easy". Uh, yeah, sure, whatever. I actually preferred him when he sang pure nonsense — that way, you could just not bother at all, but here, Pitchforkers all over the world just slobbered over these bits-o'-banalities (Pitchfork: "For the first time in almost 10 years, it seems that Martsch might actually have something he wants to say" — if so, maybe he shouldn't be saying anything), and forgot to think about whether the music here actually means anything.

I have no way of explaining what exactly went wrong in between You In Reverse and its utterly uninspired follow-up — the players are essentially the same, co-producer Dave Trumfio has a decent reputation, and according to various interviews, Martsch was in high spirits when entering the recording studio. Of course, once again do remember that essentially all Built To Spill albums sound the same, and the qualitative difference between any of their two records is negligible in the grand scheme of things. But every once in a while, they put out an album that seems to sug­gest there is yet some hope for the old gray school of Nineties' alt-rock — like You In Reverse — and then they put out an album that almost makes me swear off guitar-based rock music and go wash my ears out with a piano concerto or, pending that, with some Eurodisco. Anything but another eight-minute mid-tempo post-grunge psychosermon from Doug Martsch. This one, I think, deserves a thumbs down all the way. 

Built To Spill: You In Reverse

BUILT TO SPILL: YOU IN REVERSE (2006)

1) Goin' Against Your Mind; 2) Traces; 3) Liar; 4) Saturday; 5) Wherever You Go; 6) Conventional Wisdom; 7) Gone; 8) Mess With Time; 9) Just A Habit; 10) The Wait.

Can I come out and say that You In Reverse is the best ever Built To Spill album? No, that would be illogical and arbitrary. Besides, how can I even begin to pronounce those kinds of judge­ment on a band that I do not properly «get», whose music I have no deep feel for? And be­sides, how can a band that is more than ten years into its musical career release a «best» album? Surely that is downright impossible.

But let us just see what we can see about this, on a track-by-track basis, just for the first several numbers. First, ʽGoin' Against Your Mindʼ is fast. I think it's faster than anything they played before, and it helps the sound — you know, «alt-rock» in general, with its preference of mid- and slow tempos, tends to wear you down, and this is oh so true of all preceding Built To Spill re­cords. So the song is almost nine minutes long, but who cares? It's an impressive speed train, quieting down in the middle to let the drummer catch a breath, only to explode into even more aggressive action towards the end. New guitarist Jim Roth, turning the trio into a quartet, pro­bably helps out, but it is unclear if his presence is all that essential — Martsch is a master of overdubbing, and the only reason to bring in an extra guitarist would be to lend a more «live» aura to the proceedings. Hmm, maybe it actually works.

The second track, ʽTracesʼ, slows down the tempo, although not quite to the standard creepy-crawly level of their classic albums — more disturbing is the fact that it never changes the basic rhythm or melodic pattern from start to finish, reflecting a «less challenging» attitude towards songwriting on this record. But if it works, why not? Here, the band establishes an unbreaking, monotonously pulsating melancholic vibe, out of which eventually spirals a moody guitar solo that logically and unavoidably winds itself up to hysterical heights without ever straying away from the rhythmic restrictions of the main melody — simple, evocative, and efficient. Nowhere near as intellectually challenging as ʽRandy Described Eternityʼ, for sure. But somehow, a bit more human, the way I perceive it.

The basic formula will persist: song after song after song, it is usually just one melody per unit (with the notable exception of ʽMess With Timeʼ, which begins like an Oriental-influenced lite metal number and ends like a hard-rock-meets-ska hybrid), and they consistently try to make it simpler, more accessible, maybe even more commercial, but still with enough taste and creativity, and with sufficiently convoluted lyrics that still seem to deal with the meaning of life in their own twisted ways, so as not to disappoint the demanding fan or the casual listener. Some of these songs, like ʽConventional Wisdomʼ with its swirling colorful lead guitar, charging tempo, and merry attitude, are fairly atypical for the band. Others, like the slow, jangly, psycho-dreamy ʽJust A Habitʼ, are more predictable, but the one thing that unites them all is this relative simplicity.

Oh, and another thing might be better production: for some reason, now that they are no longer handled by Phil Ek in the studio, Martsch's vocals suddenly become more upfront, and the songs in general become much more influenced by their soulful, tender, contemplative-Proustian voca­list; even if I am hardly his biggest fan, I must say that now that he is no longer hidden behind the wall of guitars, but given an equal voice with all of them, one major factor of irritation is gone, and the album is generally easier to listen to. It has even got occasional moments of conventional beauty (to which Built To Spill were never complete strangers — remember ʽHazyʼ from the de­but album? — but which was rarely a priority): ʽThe Waitʼ, in particular, is a stately, somewhat angelic choice for the album closer, with heavenly slide guitars, echoes, dreamy harmonies, and lyrics that... well, apparently they imply that your entire life consists of nothing but waiting. Yes, in a certain way I can see that. I can also see how it would agree with Built To Spill's overall musical philosophy and its somewhat Taoist overtones.

Although the qualitative gaps between all these albums are really small, to the extent that you will probably either love everything by the band, hate everything by the band, or (like myself) respect everything by the band without getting infected by it, I kinda sorta think of You In Re­verse as a major turn. Better bands would lose out by simplifying and streamlining their sound, but for Martsch and his pals it might actually be a better bet to stay away from too much experi­mentalism and esotericism, and concentrate on these «single-shot» songs that lock onto a groove and ultimately, sooner or later, make it work, no matter how trivial or boring it may have sounded during its first minute. A thumbs up, then, although do keep in mind that for a band like this, it is much better to just apply one single judgement to all the albums at the same time.

Built To Spill: Ancient Melodies Of The Future

BUILT TO SPILL: ANCIENT MELODIES OF THE FUTURE (2001)

1) Strange; 2) The Host; 3) In Your Mind; 4) Alarmed; 5) Trimmed; 6) Happiness; 7) Don't Try; 8) You Are; 9) Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss; 10) The Weather.

Oh no! «The magic is gone!», a lot of fans seem to complain about this record, implying that the new millennium's cosmic rays have somehow managed to break through the skull of Doug Martsch, of all people, corrode his genius, and destabilize his vision so now Built To Spill sound like «any other generic indie-rock band». Such a shame. I do have an alternate opinion, though, seeing as how I was always dubious of that genius in the first place — maybe it's not so much the music that has changed, but simply the people, who were once listening to Built To Spill in their easily impressionable, character-forming teen years, happened to grow up... and suddenly find out that Doug Martsch never did?

Because, honestly, if there is one big flaw to Ancient Melodies Of The Future, it is simply that the band refuses to evolve. We have largely the same formula here — dreamy, philosophical pop songs with dense layers of guitar overdubs and monotonous vocals that have little hope of clam­bering into the open from under that thick mesh of competing guitars. In this context, how could you even begin to answer the question of which songs are «better» — the ones here or the ones on the preceding «golden trio» of BtS records? Okay, so these ones are shorter, with fewer melo­dy changes along the way than there used to be, and maybe the overall number of complex riffs has somewhat decreased, but probably not because Martsch has run out of them (a guy like Martsch can never really run out of complex riffs), but because he may have wanted a slightly more straightforward, in-yer-face approach.

Personally, I have never witnessed any magic on any Built To Spill album — intellectual at­tempts at credibly modeling magic, yes, but not real magic, and in that respect, I see no diffe­rence between the old shit and the new shit. A song like ʽAlarmedʼ, for instance: any true Martsch fan should just love everything about it, from the grand opening with the swooping strings whis­tling over your head like bombers, to the equally grand lyrics ("I'm alarmed and I can't help from / Crashing onto this island we've become") to the way it gradually segues into the noisy coda, where Martsch's knightly challenge of "did you make it all wrong, so wrong?" is drowned in a sea of ominous strings and nastily dissonant keyboards. I am unable to love it, for all the already known reasons (bad singing, messy production, inability to make the best melodic elements of the song take heavy precedence over the average elements, etc.), but how could anybody who does not view these reasons as a problem not love it? Beats me.

Or a song like ʽHappinessʼ. Slide guitar opening with an almost Sleepy John Estes sound to it! Then it kinda sorta becomes closer to the Black Crowes, but who could blame them for wanting to try and combine slide with distortion? "Happiness will only happen when it can" — yet ano­ther of those simple philosophical maxims from Mr. Martsch, no better and no worse than any such statement made previously. What's not to like? Or ʽIn Your Mindʼ — backward solos, mys­terious Eastern-flavored mellotrons, a sludgy fuzzy guitar interlude, and a psychedelic climactic puncture in the chorus ("no one can see in your MIIIIND!..." — a simple truth, delivered not for the sake of providing hitherto unknown knowledge, but for the sake of letting you know that the music of Built To Spill serves to hypothetically reflect the black box activities that take place under your skull, and is thus historically and spiritually linked to... okay, did I ever mention that Doug Martsch might be seriously influenced by John Lennon circa 1966? Just in case I didn't, ʽShe Said She Saidʼ is, like, the thickest root supporting the BtS trunk).

But do not get me wrong: for me at least, the album was just as unmemorable as almost every­thing that preceded it. And the reason why, this time around, I wouldn't want to give it a thumbs up is not because the music is «bad» (Doug Martsch came to me in my dreams one of these nights and told me confidentially that he never once wrote a bad song, so I have no reason to disbelieve him if he went to all this trouble to show up), but because it has become fixed and locked in «autopilot» mode. The songs still feature plenty of the band's instrumental trickery (I did not yet mention the multi-guitar storm attack on ʽTrimmed And Burningʼ, which is one of the most im­pressive musical moments on the entire record) — they just refuse to take one step beyond that trickery, or even expand the bag of already explored tricks. The formula works, but now it thrusts itself in your face — «look, we can still write new songs in the same old ways!» But what works for intelligently anti-intellectual bands like AC/DC, can hardly be said to work for arrogantly philosophical bands like Built To Spill; a philosopher, after all, can never be satisfied with his current findings, but has to constantly dig deeper and cast wider in order to even preserve, let alone expand, his reputation. Therefore, yes, somewhat of a disappointment — but only because I was never a big fan of this band in the first place. If you were, save yourself the worry: the classic Built To Spill sound remains completely intact on this short, tight, self-assured, and «creatively» construc­ted album (where the quotation marks refer to the modern, somewhat mechanistic and, I would say, rather boring understanding of the term).

Built To Spill: Keep It Like A Secret

BUILT TO SPILL: KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET (1999)

1) The Plan; 2) Center Of The Universe; 3) Carry The Zero; 4) Sidewalk; 5) Bad Light; 6) Time Trap; 7) Else; 8) You Were Right; 9) Temporarily Blind; 10) Broken Chairs.

Okay, so this time the songs are shorter. But not that shorter — instead of eight, there's ten, and shortening them does not necessarily mean that they become less complex in structure or more immediately accessible. It does seem that the record is not so hotly bent on making a sweeping musical statement as its predecessor — rather, this time around it is again just a collection of pop-rock songs on various topics, all characterized by Doug Martsch's guitar-and-vocal trademarks but without letting us know that Built To Spill intend to conquer the world in the next 7 hours.

But ambition or no, once again I have to say that Martsch is an efficient generator of ideas in harsh need of a second partner to bring them up to speed. Case in point: the best song on the al­bum is arguably ʽElseʼ, an allegro pop-rocker with romantic vocals, psychedelic guitars, and con­voluted lyrics that seem to concern the protagonist's inability to cope with his love urges, but might as well be about physical illness — anyway, its spiralling lead guitar line and arching vocal modulations bear the stamp of beauty, nay, gorgeousness even, but neither of the two is given a strong enough presence to stand out. The vocals are buried, the lead line is never louder than the unremarkable rhythm pattern, and although the music actually develops along the way (there's a lengthy coda where Martsch tries out several guitar tricks and effects), it does not really feel as if it developed — everything is so smooth. Bluntly speaking, the guy came up with potentially sharp hooks, and then spent his time in the studio dulling them up.

Other than this little detail (namely, that all the songs here kinda suck), all the songs on this album are excellent. Smart guitar melodies, smart lyrics, smartly engineered seams between the different parts — and when I say «smart», I don't just mean «specializing in innovative, but emo­tionally meaningless chord changes»: I mean really evocative, emotionally charged melodies that transfer a whole variety of vibes, most of them positive and uplifting, even if the lyrics usually deal with various personal problems. Only the lengthy album closer ʽBroken Chairsʼ, slowing down to a relative crawl and awash in agonizingly distorted solos, breaks this sequence with the obvious intention of depressing you in the end — not entirely successful, because as Doug goes over the top about piling one psycho-bluesy solo on top of another during the final jam, the whole thing becomes «trippy» rather than «depressing», and you will probably emerge from the experi­ence with your eyes rolled back and your tongue hanging out, rather than with the bitter know­ledge that there is no hope whatsoever for the human race. But did you know, really, that crows are "mirrors of apprehension in the fallen sun"? I didn't. The lyrics sure as hell don't add much to that depressing effect.

Additional highlights — ʽCenter Of The Universeʼ, whose opening riff creates a musical vor­tex of sorts (yes, Martsch is really good at «bends and wobbles», as Robert Fripp would call them); ʽTemporarily Blindʼ, whose cobweb of ringing, sighing, sirening, and grinning guitars will con­fuse your ears before suddenly merging into one single power riff, then exploding once again into a miriad of kaleidoscopic sounds; and the song that most people talk about when they mention this record, because it is so much easier to talk about words than notes — ʽYou Were Rightʼ, in which Martsch collects as many classic rock negative clichés as possible ("all we are is dust in the wind", "we're all just bricks in the wall", "it's a hard rain's gonna fall", "this is the end") and acknowledges their truthfulness over a tired, stuttering tempo, ending the song by repeatedly asking the question "do you ever think about it?". Stupid rocker, if we never thought about it, would we even be coming up with all these trite phrases in the first place?

Anyway, here comes another thumbs up to another album that commands unambiguous respect, but hardly ever gives me any emotional thrills. I have no idea what it would take to make these songs really work — additional instruments beside guitars? a different vocalist? a better mix? a less impressionistic verbal style? atmospheric voiceovers from a resurrected Vincent Price? what­ever. I'd still take the simple, «trivial», but so highly efficient guitar sound of Nirvana over this by default — however, whenever you are in the mood for something that's very Nineties, very pop-rock, very far removed from the avantgarde spirit, but also somehow quite challenging and in­ventive, well... just Keep It Like A Secret, and we'll be able to carry the Built To Spill legacy, untarnished and unspoiled by excessive popularity, through the coming years.

Built To Spill: Perfect From Now On

BUILT TO SPILL: PERFECT FROM NOW ON (1997)

1) Randy Described Eternity; 2) I Would Hurt A Fly; 3) Stop The Show; 4) Made-Up Dreams; 5) Velvet Waltz; 6) Out Of Site; 7) Kicked It In The Sun; 8) Untrustable/Part 2 (About Someone Else).

By the time Built To Spill's third and allegedly best album comes along, I think I understand what my major problem with Doug Martsch is. Simply put, the man is just not as much of a «guitar sound magician» as he tries to make us believe. Yes, there is quite a bit of experimentation with song structures, overdubs, guitar tones, and chord progressions going on, but all of it is still strict­ly written in «rock language», and when you look at all the separate parts one by one, they are rarely all that special. The melodies are far too complex to trigger immediate gut reaction à la Nirvana (I think Doug Martsch would have died of shame if he ever got caught with an ʽIn Bloomʼ-type riff on one of his songs), yet not «where-the-hell-did-this-come-from?»-sort of com­plex enough to amaze and astound you.

That said, Martsch at least tries to live up to the album's rashly presumptuous title — especially considering that somehow along the line he managed to secure his band a contract with nothing less than Warner Bros., while at the same time retaining the right to creative freedom. So here was an actual challenge to produce something that could be commercially viable and artistically meaningful at the same time, and, fortunately, the man's ambitions burst through the bland indie-rock shell that so thickly enveloped There's Nothing Wrong With Love and carried him to­wards anthemic, psychedelic, and noise-rich heights. This is very clearly an album that wants, oh so desperately, to be the Grandest Serious Record of the decade, and Martsch invests so much of himself in the effort that I fully understand people who like to swear by this record, particularly if they were in their world-sniffing teens at the time, and Doug Martsch was their Pete Townshend, taken to the next advanced level of conscience.

The songs here are lengthy — indeed, way too lengthy for a potentially commercial album re­leased on a major label — and almost always drift from one melody into a completely different one, even if the key will probably remain the same. It's not as if they really needed to do that, be­cause the permeating mood is consistently philosophical and almost meditative, rather than ad­venturous: Martsch states that in the very first song, dealing with the concept of eternity and its relation with the fleeting individual, and then never really lets go until the last minute. These are not cosmic voyages into some flowery parallel universe — they are trips inside the depth of your mind, sometimes guided by rationality, sometimes just going off the deep end without bothering too much where the stream will end up taking you. They often promise genuine depth and occa­sionally hint at real beauty, although, alas, the hint usually remains just a hint for me.

One problem is that, although the album is still essentially a «pop» album, Martsch's singing abilities remain unsatisfactory. Not only does he have this really limited, annoying vocal range, but his vocals are usually mixed «below» the instruments rather than «above» them, which means that your attention is supposed to be focused on the guitars (or even on the accompanying cello, deftly played by guest musician John McMahon on about half of the tracks) rather than on the singing — but that is just plain silly, considering that the biggest hooks are sometimes planted right in the vocal, not instrumental, bits (like the chorus to ʽI Would Hurt A Flyʼ, or the "and it never will, no it never will" bit on ʽMade-Up Dreamsʼ). Honestly, the man should have taken Pete Townshend's example and arm himself with a more suitable vocalist. I am fairly sure that both John Lennon and Tom Verlaine must be among Doug's chief influences when it comes to both songwriting and singing, but he simply isn't big enough to fill the britches of either one, period. I mean, if he were and if he knew it, why hide your voice behind a wall of sound?

Another problem is that — so sue me — much too often, I still have not the faintest idea what the songs are supposed to be about, or even what my own gut feeling should suggest to me about them. Naturally, I am not talking about straightforward lyrical interpretations — but, you know, something like ʽOut Of Siteʼ is just overflowing with grandeur, starting out like Pink Floyd and ending a bit like ʽStairway To Heavenʼ, yet I have no idea to what exactly this grandeur is being applied. There's a lot of raging interlocking guitars that switch almost at random from playful funky pop to psychedelic rock, but I do not have any emotional rapprochement with the material. It's all very clever, but it rings hollow. Or, sometimes, maybe too derivative — that funky, swampy groove that constitutes the bulk of ʽI Would Hurt A Flyʼ offers a respectable variation on the formula, what with the grinning wah-wah guitar licks and the cello complementing each other in a novel manner, yet the overall effect is still not enough to stop me from smirking, «oh, gee, Funkadelic meets Electric Light Orchestra», almost against my will.

One thing I will admit: this is not «bullshit rock», by any means — not just another «deep» album whose creator just wants to come across as a serious artist, without any emotional or intellectual capacities to back up the ambitions. Rather, Perfect From Now On is that «semi-successful» attempt to justify these ambitions which has something like a 50/50 chance to irritate or amaze, depending on one's DNA peculiarities or the particular context in which this album has been heard. I have listed the primary flaws which render it impotent for me — the vocals, the emotio­nal confusion, the emphasis on length and complexity of the structures rather than the individual good parts — but all of this, to a large degree, just reflects personal taste. Objectively, this is still a huge step forward from the genericity of There's Nothing Wrong With Love and, in terms of scale and ambition, from the technical experimentalism of the band's debut album, so there is no way we could leave this without a thumbs up, be it ever more «brainy» than «heartfelt». 

Built To Spill: There's Nothing Wrong With Love

BUILT TO SPILL: THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH LOVE (1994)

1) In The Morning; 2) Reasons; 3) Big Dipper; 4) Car; 5) Fling; 6) Cleo; 7) The Source; 8) Twin Falls; 9) Some; 10) Distopian Dream Girl; 11) Israel's Song; 12) Stab; 13) Preview.

Perhaps I am not getting something, but I actually hear this record as a notable, if not blatantly notable regression from the band's debut. Naturally, there's nothing wrong with love, but there is something wrong about starting out as a small, instrumentally traditional, but decidedly experi­mental combo and then, once you have laid out a claim, retreating into safer, much better known and exploited territory. In other words, Built To Spill's sophomore effort is a more accessible, more easily understandable, more emotionally predictable, and more intellectually boring record than their debut — and it really needn't have been that way.

The songs, for the most part, are indeed about love, although I couldn't vouch for everything — to do that, I'd have to check the texts, and, unfortunately, Martsch's sneery, slightly Lennon-esque (but much less sharp) vocals just do not inspire me into a detailed investigation of what's under the hood. In any case, there isn't a single ballad here with the emotional grip of ʽHazyʼ — as a matter of fact, the album does not distinguish well enough between rockers and ballads anyway. It's all just an interminable hookless mess of bland syncopated alt-rock riffage; thank God that they do not at least go overboard with the grungy distortion schtick, because with just a little push they could have become an early predecessor to Nickelback.

I mean, the song ʽCarʼ was a goddamn single here. Speaking of singles, is there a single reason why that song should command our special attention? It has no hooklines whatsoever, the singing is completely expressionless, and the use of cello is pretty much wasted since it just blends together with the bassline. Rotten dynamics, too: both of the solos are mixed in way too low, so it all feels more like obligatory bits of jamming rather than elements of development. Nor does the melody change throughout ­— just riffing on that same chord. If this is the single, how could you expect the album to be any better? It isn't. It's all a letdown.

Arguably, Martsch's big mistake here was to make a «soulful» record, something like a cross be­tween a set of John Lennon bedroom guitar demos and sentimental Californian singer-songwri­ting, combining the harshness and directness of the former with the vulnerability and sweetness of the latter. Perhaps I am messing up the real influences here, but no matter: the important thing is that, in the process, the songs all got more simple, poppy, and samey, which is just not good, because Buit To Spill are not masters of the pop hook. A few nicely placed vocal lines on ʽRea­sonsʼ and maybe ʽBig Dipperʼ are still offset by the overall grayness of the arrangements, and I remember absolutely nothing about any of the other songs, not even after three or four listens.

Actually, I do remember one of the lines on ʽStabʼ — "I wrote a song, it was slow and long". Not all the songs here are slow and long, but most of them feel slow and long, largely because they are based on such familiar and uninteresting rhythm and lead patterns. But if it is not the innova­tive guitar work, what could it be then that could make this album work in return? The singing? Bland, if at least not over-dramatized. The arrangements? They're all the same: guitar-based, too restrained to kick your rock'n'roll ass and too brutal to have subtlety. The bare fact that this does not sound like Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins? Well, it does not. In fact, it all still sounds more «wise» than your average (or even your average famous) alt-rock band, precisely because of Martsch's restrained approach — but what can I do with myself if all this «wisdom» just deterio­rates into blandness and boredom at the blink of an eye?

The least boring track on the album is the final joke — ʽPreviewʼ, a spoof on bonus tracks that gives us a glimpse of the «upcoming» album by the band, with brief snippets of several «songs» (parodies on punk and power ballads) that actually sound more exciting than the album itself. Even if a few tunes have potential, they would still need to be rewritten and re-recorded to realize it fully (ʽReasonsʼ, that's the one I am especially looking at — I wonder what somebody like John Lennon could have made out of it, had it fallen into his hands? It's definitely got a «Lennon-type chord change» to it around the 1:02 mark, and later). As it is, I can only view the record as yet another of the many mid-1990s failures to bring intelligent guitar-based singer-songwriter rock back to its former standards, and sorrowfully award it a thumbs down.

Built To Spill: Ultimate Alternative Wavers

BUILT TO SPILL: ULTIMATE ALTERNATIVE WAVERS (1993)

1) The First Song; 2) Three Years Ago Today; 3) Revolution; 4) Shameful Dread; 5) Nowhere Nothin' Fuckup; 6) Get A Life; 7) Built To Spill; 8) Lie For A Lie; 9) Hazy; 10) Built Too Long (parts 1, 2 & 3).

The classic associations that usually spring up in any account of the story of Built To Spill are Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. — two of the major «ugly-guitar-sound» combos of the Eighties, both of which transparently influenced Built To Spill, the former in terms of freedom of sound and expe­rimental approach, the latter in terms of «dirty jamming» which, in turn, goes all the way back to Neil Young, Pete Townshend and the like (echoes of whom are also sometimes heard in the music — ironically, one of the kick-ass riffs upon which they stumble in the ʽBuilt Too Longʼ jam happens to be the riff that Pete often played live in the jam section of ʽMy Generationʼ).

Curiously, though, my first association with these guys concerned neither Sonic Youth nor Dino­saur Jr., but rather a somewhat more distant and less frequently quoted relative — Television! If anything, Built To Spill for the 1990s (and this is especially obvious on this first, and still very much derivative, album) were exactly what Television were for the 1970s: a small-format, but large-ambition band, with a vision expressed through a haughty, sternly determined manner of singing and all sorts of challenging guitar interplay, combining elements of folk, punk, drone, blues improvisation, and noise. In other words, grand prog-rock deconstructed to fit the limita­tions of a small guitar-based combo — something that must probably require a lot of clout and a lot of skill to do right.

Television did it perfectly all right; as to Built To Spill, while my respect for them even in this early incarnation is enormous, I am not too sure if Ultimate Alternative Wavers, a rather boldly self-aggrandizing title as it is, truly constitutes «great» music. There is no denying the feats of imagination that went into the construction of these songs: this is not «math-rock» as such, since the music does not demand perfect rhythmic precision at each nanosecond, and it is definitely not the «nuts-rock» of Primus, either, but the song structures are quite complex and challenging all the same. The band core, consisting of Doug Martsch on guitar/vocals and Brett Netson on se­cond guitar and/or bass, like to go from folk to rock to funk to noise and back within the same song — this is why the songs usually take quite a bit of time to develop, but this is definitely not wasted time: the only track on which the band members could be accused of a little self-indul­gence is the closing jam ʽBuilt Too Longʼ, whose title is already self-ironic, but even there we have a distinct three-way partition that indicates... well, composition.

On the other hand, the same approach also reveals the major weakness of Built To Spill: a lack of obvious purpose to this music. Sure you could address this criticism to the likes of King Crimson as well, but, first of all, Built To Spill do not rock as hard as King Crimson, second, they do not have as many impressive riffs as King Crimson, and third and perhaps most important, their level of technical mastery, though easily comparable to Television, hardly even begins approaching the Fripp/Belew standards, so you do not have this extra bonus of being totally dazzled by the per­formances, though you might be amused or intrigued by them. These are interesting songs, sure enough, but I have a hard time «feeling» them.

As an example, take the first song, conveniently titled ʽThe First Songʼ because, indeed, it is not easy to come up with a better title. It seems to be a poetic complaint about the hardships of living in a world in which the protagonist does not really belong: "How can I not believe in things that everybody else sees?" The music does seem to be tailored accordingly, with minor key folksy strumming à la Led Zep, woman-tone-heavy electric wailings, and brooding psychedelic solos weeping over each other from two or three different guitars ­— yet somehow none of this trans­lates into conventional desperation that could break your heart. I don't know, maybe it's some­thing to do with Doug's voice, which I find rather bland and «just decent», or maybe it is the lack of a well-defined core theme for the song (they seem to just be happy to move from Led Zep to Hendrix to Television to The Cure and shove in more, more, more without being afraid of dis­orienting the listener — which is exactly, I believe, what is happening), or maybe they don't get the best possible production... anyway, something just doesn't click, as formally cool as the entire experience could be called.

When they wind up the tempo and crank up the volume, like on ʽRevolutionʼ or ʽGet A Lifeʼ, songs whose titles, lyrics and moods «call to action», the overall effect is the same: the music is more complex than on your average Neil Young song, but the cumulative reaction is nowhere near as violent — when Neil really gets into it, it makes you want to kill (with love, of course — what else?), but when Doug and Brett get into it (like on the aggressive solo section of ʽGet A Lifeʼ), it makes you go... «wow, cool sonic overlays, dudes». Like when they solo on ʽLie For A Lieʼ, in these short little «telephonic» bursts of bubbly melody: cute and weird, but not quite as meaningful as, for instance, when Talking Heads do so on Remain In Light songs.

Arguably the most conventional song on the album, a leisurely ballad with a grand lead guitar melody, is ʽHazyʼ, and perhaps not surprisingly, it also has the most soulful and relatable vocal performance from Doug: "Hazy / Just because sometimes you make me crazy" actually gives us a vulnerable human being, and serves as the emotional hub of the album — too bad that it comes almost at the very end, as if they were actually ashamed of having an accessible song like that sitting next to all those feats of imaginative overdubbing.

Do not get me wrong: even without ʽHazyʼ, the album would still get an unquestionable thumbs up from me — just because few of the songs work instantaneously on a «gut level» does not mean that the album as a whole does not work on some other level of conscience. At the very least, in the most formal way it is a real wonder what these three guys have managed to concoct with just the most basic of instrumentation, in an age where «alt-rock» was already beginning to feel a little like a dirty word; no wonder that a cult was rather quickly formed around the band, praising them for salvaging the underground in an era when R.E.M. and Nirvana were perceived as a threat to the underground's very existence as an «underground». To do so, however, they had to produce music that was denser, less easily accessible, and less emotionally devastating — had they done otherwise, you know, they risked selling as many copies as Nirvana, and that would have been the end of small club elitism. Or maybe Doug Martsch could end up killing himself, so thank God for them small record labels.