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

Long way of saying that I'm an agnostice re Built to Spill.

But anyway, I almost did a Taking Sides: BTS vs. MM, the comparisons are apt; Sterling has done a good job of explaining why BTS matter to those to whom they matter. Excepting the lyrics not meaning anything discernable, the argument fits MM as well, although I find them comforting the same way the Smiths or early Talking Heads are comforting.

Back to BTS: I can see the appeal to Darren Hayman -- at least in the vocals. ;) But yes, the hyperbole is distracting, but, um, in the indie rock/emo world who else in top of that heap besides those two (and maybe the Dismemberment Plan)? Death Cab for Cutie? Burning Airlines?? The Get-Up Kids?!?

wow, I'll all over the place here.

'Central Standard Time' is great, they do some great covers ('Regret' by N.O. and 'Close To Me' by The Cure) and 'I'm A Loner...' and the album Four Minute Mile are all good places to start.

They're one of those bands that hits the spot if you don't have to pay much for their albums (used! Napster!). You can find a lot of the stuff off their split singles and such off Gnutella or Napster or whatever program works these days.

_There's Nothing Wrong With Love_ = beautiful naivete. _Perfect From Now On_ = epic modesty. _Keep It Like A Secret_ = melding of the previous two albums, leaning towards _Perfect_'s grandeur. I'd avoid the _Live_ album, unless you're a super-fan, or it's really cheap. And, live, they can get a bit ... unwieldy. But that's why Robert Johnson invented CDs.

I used to like BTS but didn't play them forever. Put on some of their stuff recently and Dougie's voice annoyed the hell out of me so I sold what stuff of theirs I had. I guess my vote now would be Dud.

???? you need to listen to more music.

they sound like hippie jam band music to me now after seeing them live. Every song does not need to last for 10 minutes! I still kind of like Perfect from Now On but I sold everything else. The early stuff is really horrible, that "Twin Falls" song makes me cringe. "Keep It Like A Secret" was just boring. The last record was painfully bad. Turn into Phish already, BTS, I know you want to.

Haven't heard the live one, but live albums rarely impress me anyway.

i like 'em cuz girls like em?

Saw him at a Modest Mouse gig last month at the place where he used to tend bar. The BTS/MM connection is still thriving, apparently.

it's called You Were Right? that's the "you were wrong when you said" one?

i love that song so much. i'm just revisiting Keep it like a secret and i think i really like this album... iiinteresting. i think they're like my one CollegeBoyRock band that i like

I love that song too-- great lyrical gimmick.

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.

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

never seen them but would like to, tho i'm really only familiar with KILAS and PFNO. Martsch is a seriously underrated guitarist. like this video from last year of them playing "Else" just floors me. i know dude can shred but he's just really well rounded, i really dig this three-piece arrangement of the song, that we-ooh-we-ooh-we-ooh-we-ooh-we-ooh-oh lead sounds so much better when he's doing it. song needs that space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JxIYuVwKw

everybody knows build to spill rules and are great live, seen them twice, would love to see them again

I saw them live in 2016 and they were trying out a power trio, which I didn't think worked so well. but some of the jams were indeed epic (goin' against your mind, holy crap)

my sister just shared this story with me:

so my good friend, _______, her and her husband’s family are HUGE bts fans. anyway, _______'s sister-in-law was dying of cancer, and the band was on tour but she was too sick to go to the concert. the family contacted doug and he came TO HER HOUSE and performed a private concert for her and the family. they said he was just the nicest guy. she passed soon after.

this has got to be the worst thread name on ilm

oh shit doug martsch is the best

did old school ilx hate absolutely everything or what

i think so. it's crazy there's like 20 bts threads. i chose poorly, but i think this had the most recent updates idk.

I think it's nice to reclaim these threads with praise and love of music

I also think Doug Martsch seems like a great guy

and BTS rocks

she told me that this morning and now im going through their whole discography, been a while

Annoying vocals, unremarkable melodies, self-consciously clever lyrics, capable of rending the world's most annoying sounds out of a guitar...
― Melissa W, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (sixteen years ago) Permalink

lol radiohead much?

BTS is the Nicholson Baker of indie

They blame “both sides” for WWII?

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