If ever there was a band we should all be agreed on, it is Built To Spill but I'm damned if I can join the consensus that here is an indies band indies band. In their relentless tedious sonic jam, they are the least attractive looking gang of four imaginable. They are like Phish, stoical wiseguys jamming on through the night.
At the Governor's Ball on Sunday, June 24th, they brought the hardly most exciting afternoon ever to a screectching halt: a standstill of heads down, studious guitar plucking: this was much closer to Grateful Dead white man boogie or Phish's experimental dexterous jackoff then, say, TV On The Radio. These were white boys circle jerking.
I guess I am being unfair, this is not my scene, my penchant for jam is really more to do with the bass than the guitar, I like deep bass rhythm fucks and seeing where the beat takes you but Built to Spill, a band from the North West Boise, Idaho, are as wide as the plains: they expand their sound in trilling guitar parts rather than contracting them into brief powerful spurts.
It doesn't sound bad but by the 1995 classic "Distopian Dream Girl", I had lost all interest in the occasion and an extended ending of "Broken Chairs" at the end, found me sitting on the ground with my eyes closed and nodding off. You either fall into a trance with BTS are you are in the wrong place: I am too energetic to fall into their mellow yet melodic sound, I can't give into the sound. I can't drowse with them, I either grit my teeth or fall asleep.
Built To Spill ignore their fans as they trade off rumbling interlocking parts, they aren't playing loud riffs, they are dissolving liquidy strings bending not bouncing.
There is a huge market for this stuff and they can have it.
Grade: C