Built to Spill in 10 Songs
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The post Built to Spill in 10 Songs appeared first on Consequence.
This article originally ran in 2015, but we’re dusting it off for Doug Martsch’s birthday on September 16th.
Ever felt overwhelmed by an artist’s extensive back catalog? Been meaning to check out a band, but you just don’t know where to begin? In 10 Songs is here to help, offering a crash course and entry point into the daunting discographies of iconic artists of all genres. This is your first step toward fandom. Take it.
There’s something cagey about Doug Martsch, and by extension Built to Spill; a complexity lying underneath a calm surface. His head sways back and forth softly, those iconic nasal vocals loosen esoteric, terse, emotionally resonant lines, and his hand ranges across the fretboard as if with its own mind. Built to Spill songs often seem effortless, yet they’ve been brainy, toothsome touchstones for indie rock fans for over two decades.
No matter how timid or reticent Martsch may be in person, his songs make deep connections to other people. That’s evident in the conversational way the guitars weave among each other, his various collaborations, and the fluid progression of Built to Spill despite the band’s many lineup changes. The outfit’s music speaks candidly with the history of rock ‘n roll as well: They’re not afraid to cover the legends or to poke fun at them.
While every Built to Spill song has insane guitar proficiency at its core, that belies the diversity of their catalog: sprawling epics and tightly written gems, sweet sincerity and knowing quips, wild fury and gentle dreams. They’re a band that breathes music, both in and out, to a degree that few others can claim.
Built to Spill Premiere New Album When the Wind Forgets Your Name: Stream
Time to freshen up on what exactly makes the guitar heroes tick. Here’s Built to Spill in 10 Songs, and you can find a playlist of every track at the end.
— Adam Kivel
THE SIX-MINUTE GUITAR WEB
“CARRY THE ZERO” FROM KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET (1999)
As much as Doug Martsch is able to wiggle his way into your heart with his squawking vocals, it’s his guitar work that truly leaves a mark on your emotions. Built to Spill are one of the ’90s best guitar rock groups for a reason. The webs of intricate overlapping aren’t about showing off. It’s about laying down something that just feels right. “Carry the Zero” slides around in a mess of this. As likely as the lyrics are to tear you down (“I was just trying to help/ But I guess that I pushed too hard/ Now I cant even touch it/ Afraid it will fall apart”), it’s the guitars marching in a symphonic outro that do you in.
By the end, every guitar line is somehow neatly arranged, put in place to form a larger creation, catching you in its sticky lines and making a beautiful framework for those distanced enough to see it in full. Where’s the fun in that, though? It’s best to get adventurous, and in this case that means letting their guitars blanket over you until you’re sewn into the thread, caught in a tangle of organized insanity that is the consumption and order of every day life. The world will eat you up and serve you to its spiders. Built to Spill hurl themselves into the mess, soundtracking every trap and demise they can until it’s their turn for eight-legged creatures to consider them dinner. — Nina Corcoran
EXTENDED JAMS
“GOIN’ AGAINST YOUR MIND” FROM YOU IN REVERSE (2006)
You in Reverse was the first album that saw Built to Spill grow from three members to four. With that size, they did what any band who loves to play would do: jam. Almost every song on the album extends a few bars longer than usual, stuffing more riffs in place of the usual song’s cutoff. The album’s introduction, “Goin’ Against Your Mind,” also serves as its longest track. In almost nine minutes, Doug Martsch, Brett Nelson, Scott Plouf, and Jim Roth gear up for a fierce tackling of childhood memories, mental strength, and retaliation, all illustrated by spacious chords and heavy downbeats.
The song’s real feat comes in its brief pause near the middle. Several antsy tweakings and quiet fiddling on the strings hint at what’s next: the revived second half of an emotional exercise where the four leave everyone on the floor. There’s not much that can be said to explain it other than that Built to Spill have a gift for the riff. It doesn’t matter how long they play for. They always keep you entertained, fully invested, and anxious for what happens next. “Goin’ Against Your Mind” just happens to be one example of why their jams are one of a kind. — N.C.
MAKING FRIENDS WITH CALVIN
“VIRGINIA REEL AROUND THE FOUNTAIN” FROM LIVE (2000)
Unfortunately for Beat Happening frontman Calvin Johnson, who co-wrote and co-sang “Virginia Reel Around the Fountain” for his and Martsch’s side project the Halo Benders, the version without his vocals that appears on Live — as essential a live album to a studio band’s catalogue as any — all but replaces the original and is a consummate Built to Spill snapshot. A synergized and supercharged rhythm section, over-stretched Martsch vowel sounds, vintage soloing, carefully selected guitar tones, carefully placed guitar wahs: it’s all here and in perfect proportion, escalating over exactly seven minutes, or the ideal cooking time for the prototypical Built to Spill song recipe.
And while Martsch has long contended that lyric writing isn’t one of his strong points, on “Virginia,” he leans on one especially succinct one to tee up two instrumental minutes that send the song out right: “Don’t say no, just say you don’t/ Know. Don’t say no, just say you don’t.” — Steven Arroyo
CLASSIC ROCK WORSHIP
“CORTEZ THE KILLER” FROM LIVE (2000)
Neil Young’s classic hard rock number “Cortez the Killer” has long been considered one of music’s greatest achievements. With a pained plot and a guitar solo that puts thousands to shame, “Cortez the Killer” snatches up massive chords and wrestles with them slowly, letting the bass toss an uppercut whenever things begin to sigh. Young takes step after step in a marathon song outlining the lost love affair of Spanish conquistagor Hernán Cortés. Calling it a jam certainly doesn’t do it justice, but if you’re going to cover it, you have to at least surpass the original version’s seven-minute timestamp.
That’s exactly what Built to Spill does, but they’re overachievers about it. Twenty minutes of guitar solos scratch across the frets, searching through that never-ending hallway of hollow space and dusty country blood for some kind of solace. Martsch sings with complete and total seriousness, playing the song like it means the world to him. For all we know, it very well may. The ratio of guitars per square inch on this make up for the lack of Young’s scratchy vocals. Martsch pours his soul into the cover, throwing every verse into the shadows and dragging it back out, making room for some of the heaviest, grittiest, intense solos that somehow manage to give the original a serious run for its money. — N.C.
CLASSIC ROCK DECONSTRUCTION
“YOU WERE RIGHT” FROM KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET (1999)
While it’s clear that Martsch and co. have a deep, devoted appreciation of rock history, it goes beyond studied covers and idol worship — it infiltrates their very blood. Couched in this simple song are a couple handfuls of famous musicians, the depressing lyrics from iconic songs jammed together to form a single song that could pass for a tune about a breakup, depression, or existential dread.
On its own, Kansas’ insistence that “all we are is dust in the wind” was kind of tough, but when it’s doubled down immediately by Pink Floyd’s “we’re all just bricks in the wall,” it’s heartbreaking. Martsch goes through lyrics from the likes of Dylan, Bob Seger, and The Stones, affirming their darkest notes: a hard rain is gonna fall, we’re still running against the wind, and you truly can’t always get what you want.
It’s as if, in a dark hour, Martsch is spinning the dial on his radio, his depression making each song sound just as depressed. It’s a strategy they’d used in the past — “Nowhere Nothin’ Fuckup” adopted pieces of The Velvet Underground’s “Oh! Sweet Nuthin'” — but here they twist up an entire era. In that shared history, though, there’s real catharsis. After telling all those songs they were right, he comes to some sort of acceptance: “You were right when you said this is the end.”
But, like any truly broken person, he’s got some insecurity left, repeating a clarion call for someone to feel the same way. “Do you ever think about it?” Martsch repeats, asking the question we all do in those dark hours. — A.K.
ASKING QUESTIONS AND EXPERIMENTING
“STRANGE” FROM ANCIENT MELODIES OF THE FUTURE (2001)
When you’re a serial sympathizer, nothing is question-proof. Doug Martsch might be that, or he might just have the healthy natural desire to understand, which starts with the willingness to play devil’s advocate against yourself. “Strange” opens the contradictorily titled Ancient Melodies of the Future with a collection of these resulting cognitive contradictions.
Shrugging, Martsch goes back and forth with himself on astronomical mysteries (“This strange change in atmosphere/ And in gravity too, and its severity”) and intimate ones: “You’re not listening or I’m not saying it right” — in other words, “It’s your fault. Unless it’s mine.” His words on “Strange” are basically one big question mark, but with a chord progression as warm and fully developed as “Strange”‘s, they’re as assured as those come. Right? — S.A.
ECCENTRIC INDIE BALLADRY
“CAR” FROM THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH LOVE (1994)
In 1994, Built to Spill released There’s Nothing Wrong With Love and, consequently, their fan-favorite single, “Car.” Martsch sings like he’s fronting the band you would go see in your friend’s garage. It’s cool and casual and sooo relatable. But, as the years begin to pass, it still feels that way, even though you have long since moved out from your parents’ house and stopped idolizing teenage woe-is-me-dom. It’s the knowing song of a protagonist looking towards the future with gathered hope, even if things don’t look bright.
Lines like “I wanna see it when you get stoned on a cloudy, breezy desert afternoon” and “You’ll get the chance to take the world apart” were made to be inked, on the flesh or a spiral notebook. “Car” tugs at the heart, although maybe that’s a result of the cello. Whatever the reason, it’s immediately recognizable why Built to Spill was such a large influence on Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock.
Their ability to make love songs about life with the looseness of an indie rock band just different enough to warrant a sore thumb comparison is uncanny. “Car” happens to be the song that highlights that. It’s a ballad for mixtapes left in metal high school lockers, junk-filled glove compartments, and the pockets of hoodie-wearing couples, even if you’ve long since graduated. — N.C.
FREE-RANGE COMPOSITIONS
“STOP THE SHOW” FROM PERFECT FROM NOW ON (1997)
Built to Spill isn’t a band that’s eager to lead you by the hand through their songs. Case in point: “Stop the Show.” The song opens on a lazy guitar waggle, cello added after a while as if to accentuate exactly how languid the tune is. Scott Plouf sounds as if he’s constantly having to hold himself back from upping the tempo, fighting back against the gravity pulling his sticks towards the drums.
This instrumental sway goes on, the guitars gaining some slight crunch here, the cello bow pushing harder there, but always fading back softly. But then, at nearly three minutes of haze, when the thing starts to fade away like an instrumental interlude, everything builds back up. Plouf starts punching at the kit. The guitars chug into place. Martsch’s vocals nose their way into the scene.
To top the unexpected emergence, the “song” half of the track kicks around from tempo to tempo, from pattern to pattern. The stair-stepping first verse gives way to an off-kilter chorus, which in turn leaves room for a proggy time signature burst, a return back to the haze, and a shimmying wash. Things open up completely for a moment of tangled cables, and then a cutesy click-beat and guitar twinkle closes things out, as if it had been lying behind the mess the whole time. The song never sounds cautiously planned, but neither does it sound messy. Built to Spill handle organic explorations just as well as focused songwriting. — A.K.
ABSOLUTE HONESTY
“FLING” FROM THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH LOVE (1994)
Masturbation and regrettable casual sex aren’t exactly an uncovered topic in rock music, but it’s not exactly the kind of thing that gets covered by too many songwriters in the smart, sensitive indie rocker realm either. But “Fling” shows Martsch for the absolute truth-teller that he is, completely unafraid of whatever he says making him unlikable. Over some of the most sentimental acoustic chords and saccharine cello hum, Martsch lets loose a line from someplace other than his heart: “And it takes me a long time/ To come to the memory of us.” But don’t fret! He’s not just sitting around masturbating to a lost love! He’s remembering a “fling,” so it’s not even that serious.
Better yet, the song’s second and final verse details another woman who shows up to help him out: “And I didn’t stop her/ But I didn’t lead her on.” This is a sweet song about sad, senseless sexual gratification, and it sounds like a love song. Few Built to Spill songs match it in its absolute direct honesty. But also, it’s clear when Martsch’s lyrics are hazy and vague, it’s not because he’s afraid to or can’t be clear — “Fling” is enough proof of that — but that those are the songs about him figuring things out himself as well. — A.K.
ALBUM-ENDING SONG EXPLOSION
“BROKEN CHAIRS” FROM KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET (1999)
Even when turning down for a quietly potent love song like the Ancient Melodies of the Future highlight “The Weather,” Built to Spill have a track record of reserving the last-track slot for the hardest hitter. If ever Built to Spill releases a greatest hits compilation, don’t be surprised to see “Broken Chairs” at the end.
While Keep It Like a Secret opens with three forcefully uplifting hook monsters, it goes out with eight and a half minutes of dread. Like Martsch’s image of a person forcing their body into the shapes of disfigured chairs, his wailing solo here (gloriously extended to about 15 minutes to close out Live, too) is the sound of sheer strain. It’s brutal, but brutally effective, and therefore the deserving last word. Sixteen years later, that’s still their habit. — S.A.
Built to Spill in 10 Songs Playlist:
Built to Spill in 10 Songs
Consequence Staff
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