Dateline - Boise, 1999: The big news for Built To Spill and its fans is that bandleader and guitarist Doug Martsch has finally violated his own policy of voluntarily rotating rhythm section members. Solidifying a permanent, full-time lineup, Martsch welcomes into the fold drummer Scott Plouf, and bassist Brett Nelson, a longtime cohort of Martsch's. Together, Plouf and Nelson lift Built to Spill from an intermittent, isolationist, solo act owned and operated by Martsch, to a vaunted trio capable of standing on its own six feet, primed with new material and at last in possession of a collective creative vision. Together, they've recorded Keep It Like a Secret, Built To Spill's most accomplished and focused effort to date.
The trio, assembled after the material from BTS's acclaimed major label debut Perfect From Now On was recorded back in late 1995, had some trouble working up Martsch's unusual compositions with their ever-shifting time signatures and seemingly random, progressive structures. Yet, where Perfect needed time and a little study to absorb its tangled potency, Keep It Like a Secret requires less analysis and more volume. Martsch has clipped his new songs by minutes, taking less time to get in, make his emphatic point, and get out.
The pieces for the new album (the band's fourth) came together spontaneously, edited down from hours of jamming. After carving those jams into songs and roughing up a list of tracks to be recorded, the band and producer Phil Ek headed down to Bear Creek and Avast studios in Seattle for basics, and out to New York's Magic Shop for mixing. The final product sings with the kind of unique, literate expressionism rarely heard in alt-rock, and rocks with the same visceral impulses. Songs like "Temporarily Blind" and "The Plan" impact with tight, Stonesy chord structures, while Martsch's searching, squealing, melodic guitar evokes Clapton on "Sidewalk" and "Bad Light." Oddly enough, Martsch lets his guard down only once on Keep It Like a Secret, on the manic, discursive album closer "Broken Chairs" (which also guests Sam Coomes of Quasi), where his playing recalls the tactile, blissed-out guitarspiel of Neil Young.
In fact, throughout Keep It Like a Secret, it is Martsch's battered Stratocaster carving the way, throwing in delirious fills, jerky changes of rhythm, and dissonant, demonic howls when words no longer suffice. Because his songs often stray from the standard verse-chorus-verse formula, Martsch has ample space to give flight to the myriad ideas - musically and lyrically - soaring around in his head.
There have never been many rock stars to come from Boise, Idaho. And Doug Martsch, born and bred in Boise, isn't going to change that. After all, here's a guy who moved out of Seattle just when Seattle got really hot; a guy who insisted on playing long, ecstatic guitar solos just as guitar solos went completely out of style. But Martsch and his music have never gone out of style, largely because they've never aspired to be in style. Ironically, with his unorthodox vision and unique deconstructionism, he may end up becoming one of the decade's most influential, independent-minded musicians. And that's saying something with more emphasis than Martsch, a soft-spoken talent with a knack for silence, would ever say for himself.
Source: http://www.iconofan.com/Artists/b/built_to_spill/bio.shtml |
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