Why In The Name Of All That Is Holy Does Anyone Like Built to Spill?

Keep It Like a Secret = all about song architecture. Half of the praise I can formulate for it involves words like organized, built, constructed, scripted, arranged, etc. Lots of praise to offer for the hook-writing, and the kind of loose, rangy mood of it -- especially when it's rangy and peppy both -- but the organization of parts is the real miracle with it (and probably a lot of what makes me love it and rather dislike the more shapeless Perfect From Now On).

I would do a typical multi-paragraph post but some asshole just did something involving some really stank seafood in the work kitchen.

Perfect From Now On has aged well.

i was hella into these dudes when i was around 18, which was the perfect time for a "wow maybe punk rock lied to me when it said guitar solos were lame" moment. now that i've listened to enough other awesome guitar jam music bts don't really do a ton for me, but there's nothing wrong with love is an a+ 90's indie guitar pop record and there's good shit scattered all across their catalog.

I get the feeling I'd go completely apeshit for this band, someone plz confirm/deny

You will. You really, really will.

i dunno they might be a little trad for you, louis - do you like, say, neil young's jammier stuff?

(you should, btw)

they are much more structured and regimented than a lot of neil's stuff though, esp. keep it like a secret.

yeah that's true - poppier too, when they keep it shortform.

otm nabisco

you were right just came on, heaven\

"She was only two it was the first time she felt blue
Cafeteria Harrison Elementary
Beneath a parachute I saw her without shoes
7UP I touched her thumb and she knew it was me
Although she couldn't see unless of course she peeked"

TNWWL is a great album if you can somehow make it through that^^

i also just love their own brand of lushness - it's like kindof ordinary, fuzzy guitar thickness, but for some reason it doesn't sound ordinary

Louis I would advise you to start with Perfect From Now On from what I know of yr taste. IMO it, There's Nothing Wrong With Love, and Keep It Like A Secret are the three greats.

I have a single which is really good but its the only thing I've ever been really taken with by them... I forget the song title, it has a funny line about his stepdad lookin like David Bowie and how he thinks Lodger rules ("stepdad's a fooool")

even though at the time i thought it was kinda meh i've grown to love "ancient melodies of the future"....

xp - "dystopian dream girl," right?

When TNWWL came out I thought on the evidence of the first 5 songs that he was gonna be like the great rescuer of inventive guitar songwriting a la Big Star, early XTC and the like.

Perfect From... was an amazing symphonic texture record, but I def. agree that Keep It... brought the song-spark again in a big way. Then... oh well.

xpost M@tt-- really? Errr. I should try it some more I suppose...

i think it was maybe the genuinely boring latest album made it seem a lot better in retrospect (man i convinced my self i liked you in reverse when it came out but that has not aged well at all)...also "fly around you pretty little miss" is one of their great pop songs, it was weird, it seemed like a throwback to nothing's wrong w/love. maybe it was an old song they had been sitting on for awhile.

otm re: "pretty little miss"

Louis, get 'perfect from now on', its wonderful. very lush, very prog, but great songs. their earlier stuff is good too. haven't been interested in much since keep it like a secret, but i had a horrible experience interviewing them around that time, which soured me on them.

really?? what was so sour?

i'd campaigned hard to get them into NME; finally got them a '10 Gallon Facts' feature, where you tell a band's story via ten interesting things about them (terrible format, but not too difficult to write around it). i think they were drunk or stoned or something, but doug evaded pretty much every question i'd asked, and was being an asshole, making constant reference to jerry garcia being his dad (he was pissed at an NME review that had referenced the Dead, i guess). by the end, the whole band were making jokes about giving jerry garcia blow jobs. it was probably quite funny from their end, but it was a total waste of my time, so i ended up writing the feature from a phoner i'd done with doug the year before. i also caught shit from my editor because it was obvious i was fleshing out a bad interview.

i wasn't too pissed off, really. but, having argued so hard for them in the office, and getting repaid with assholism, i've never felt a desire to write about them again. they're incredibly dull live, too.

i enjoy them live

i really wanted to. i love long guitar solos, but they were really underwhelming for me.

Yeah the actual guitar solos proper have never been a big draw for me with BTS. The rest of the guitar playing, though (ie the composed bits)-- magnificent.

In America
Every puddle
Gasoline rainbow

Such a brilliant lyric.

"The Weather" is a gorgeous song:

As long as it's talking to you
Talk of the weather will do.

I'd definitely like to give them a go now. You mention 'Neil Young's jammier stuff' earlier on in the thread; interestingly, 65DOS, the English math-rock-prog-IDM-wank band I've been so enthusiastically promoting on ILM recently, have been trumpeting Young's 'Harvest' as their favourite new discovery, on account of its sound. Perhaps I too should investigate.

LOL

'twin falls idaho' makes me go all funny inside everytime i hear it, too. that might be my favourite BTS. hard to believe, but Ben Folds Five's cover of the song is perhaps even better.

The album preview at the end of TNWWL is my favourite musical joke ever.

I know, I'm continually forgetting that "Midnight Star" isn't a real Bon Jovi song.

Jennifer Gentle played with them last night and told me they were really good. And friendly too.

uh, BTS is still awesome but

"In general, the Billboard.com report claims "the songs [on the new record] will be a mix between newly penned material and retooled tracks considered but ultimately dropped from...You in Reverse.""

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I don't have any strong opinion about them. The big exception is the Caustic Resin collaboration e.p. that they did--which is totally great.

A lot of people are giving their one from last summer shit itt but come on Going Against Your Mind is a pretty fuckin good song.

this thread's question has already been given its definitive answer way upthread.

Because they are from Boise, ID.! That's a good enough reson to like anything. They play free shows at BSU (Boise State University). Boise is the biggest, rockin'est town in Idaho, any band from there will blow your mind! Listen to CLOCK also, another ace Boise group.

-- 1 1 2 3 5, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (7 years ago)

I may have skimmed the thread a big quickly, but does ANYONE like the Live album? I've always thought every song on there was far superior to their respective counterpart (except for, yknow, the cover, which also is awesome). I always seem on the wrong side of the fence re: Keep It Like A Secret vs. Perfect From Now On, too...

This review might get the band some fans from a new generation?
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21096-theres-nothing-wrong-with-love/
good writing from richardson imo
band playing my city 7th of november, think I'll go but have a date w a girl not sure she's into indie rock...

That was nicely done

That album was so immediately obviously wallopingly special the minute it came out. By halfway through the first song even. It was my housemate's cd and then I went home to Minnesota for a week and missed the album so badly I bought my own

great album! feel like it is pretty ingrained in my brain from listening to it constantly for a while in 1996, so i don't really feel the need to listen to it much. but it is great.

Yeah same. I memorized it and I never play it now

I didn't get into them until Perfect From Now On, which will always be my favorite. But still, this is a mother of a record. Stab alone makes it a classic.

Ironically, the fake Built To Spill songs at the end of the record would probably have been bigger hits than anything they ever had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu4y2Jrp6zg

April 29, 2013
Cafe Stritch, San Jose, CA
(free)

Soulful Strut (Young-Holt Unlimited)
Beast of Burden (The Rolling Stones)
Southern Girls (Cheap Trick)
Sludgefeast (Dinosaur Jr.)
Abba Zaba (Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band)
Here (Pavement)
(Don't Fear) The Reaper (Blue Öyster Cult)
How Soon Is Now? (The Smiths)
Train in Vain (The Clash)
Age of Consent (New Order)

Wow. Whatta setlist

Was hoping tylerw has a soundboard recording...

wow i really hated on them up above. I kind of stand by what I said, but I do like keep it like a secret more now. perfect is still a good album. not sure they needed to ever do anything else. I would still never go see them live again.

I only saw them once about 1999ish not having heard anything by them before, and yeah they were pretty boring live although I really liked one of the songs, which turned out to be Car.

For me they've always been a band I like some songs by but in general not really into. I bought Keep It Like A Secret around the time I saw them live because it was getting rave reviews, which I found pretty baffling and tbh still do because I think it's probably my least favourite of the albums I've heard (hah reading upthread it may have actually been our stevie's review I was reading?)

i saw them live a few months ago and they were wonderful??? idk what y'all are on about

Oh God

Melissa W. got it right 22 years ago

fuck no

the only indie rock band worth a damn

question doesn't make sense, all that is holy *is* Built to Spill