Built to Spill and UOY

           As a senior in college, I was fully entrenched into the "this is how I feel about a band and always will" camp. Clearly, this is a brilliant stance that has no potential flaws. In my infinite wisdom, I even managed to have opinions on bands I hadn't heard. Somehow I was deciding that bands were either in my wheelhouse or not, without the help of the semi-important act of actually listening to their music. This is the kind of thinking that caused me to wait until I was 23 to discover Built to Spill, despite the fact that they had been around for 14 years. From that point forward, I slowly watched them become one of my all time favorite bands. One lovely western New York afternoon, Señor Dank himself propositioned the idea to listen to the first single off of their new album, You in Reverse. After some initial bellyaching, I caved in and lo and behold, a love affair was born.

Gotta give the Dick Dank the credit here. 

      

        "Going Against Your Mind" has driving drums that pulse throughout it's entire wondrous eight and a half minutes plus. This beat, in combination with a tight bass line, provide a rock solid canvas for Doug Martsch and his guitar wielding merry men to meander, dart and explode all over. Right from the first listen, I realized this was going to be a band that did two things I wasn't used to; they jammed out without being a "jam" band and they did it all the fucking time. By the fourth solo (in the first song...) I was hooked. Years later I could see that for fans, especially those that went to live shows, this wouldn't have been a surprise at all. But for me, it was clearly time to slip neck deep into an album that would dominate my life for months to come. 

        In all honesty, this was another record that was in contention for my Ultimate Album. There isn't much this beast doesn't bring to the table. Once the shock wears off that you're listening to a song as long as "Going Against Your Mind" as an opener, it only gets better. This was the first album where the band officially added a fourth member, Brett Nelson. He was able to use his expert skills to help take some of the burden to play every guitar part off of Mr. Martsch. In fact, the band brought in a pseudo-fifth member, Brett Netson, as a third guitarist (...who may or may not be just an evil doppleganger named cyborg because I mean, really, what are the odds?). He jams on four tracks, allowing for swirls of layers and depth. This was a band that was firing on all cylinders. The jams are tight and precise musically, but they have the unique ability to come across as loose sketches at the same time. Listen to them weave and twirl their way through the excellent "Traces" or traipse nimbly through the hypnotizing "Wherever You Go", and it's clear that these gents were truly locked in. 

       If there is a fear of zoning out, just wait a minute (or six) for the next track. "Conventional Wisdom" has the most instantly gripping guitar hook on the album. This helps gives the track an excellent anchor to start with before it expands into a constantly evolving jam. "Mess With Time" is a truly aggressive romp that manages to make even the cowbell sound menacing. The second half of the song has an almost polka feel, as the bass switches up the groove and churns out an infectious rhythm. So infectious it might even cause you to (gasp!) dance, or at the very least jostle your shoulders a smidgen as you air guitar in sync.

       While expert guitar noodle-fests are (and always should be) the focal point of these efforts, what helps to make this record as fantastic as stated is its variety. The breezy "Liar" allows for the listener to take a step back and appreciate a mellow vocal line. It's nice to have the vox be the showcase, reminding the listener just how good a lyricist Mr. Martsch can be (and always has been). Or take a journey with "Gone", a guitar tune in its own right, bolstered with a haunting organ that provides the perfect morbid-carnival background during the extended atmospheric outro. Even now, as I go back and listen again, I marvel at how many different ways this band is able to take their same sound and mold it into something new.

        If you're not into the long guitar jams popularized by the bands of yesteryear (read: the 70's), then this might not be the album for you. Personally, I'm fascinated by the updated, polished and altogether more uniformly focused take on ethos of the Grateful Dead. This is a band that knows their strengths but have been playing together long enough to be able to stretch their boundaries in exceptional and exhilarating new ways. If you move forward (or use the Delorean to travel back) through their work, I doubt you'll be disappointed by any of the albums in their catalog. Yet, this was a band I was ready to write off for reasons unbeknownst to even me. 

         For the four or so of you that have read more than one of my reviews, you might start to notice a theme of idiocy when it comes to making musical choices early in my life. There are multiple ways one can look at this. Maybe I'm maturing, moving along on a prosperous path where I continue to find bands and avoid the pitfalls of stereotyping/judging without a fair trial. Or perhaps I'm just doomed to look back on this era of my musical evolution with the same shaking-my-head-at-my-youth disdain that many old men on the porch share. The only thing that's certain is that whatever the future holds, this is a band that will most certainly be part of it. 

Final Score: .98 You're Living All Over Me's