Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
The Plan (1999)
Sometimes you're just late to the party when it comes to bands. Built to Spill had an incredible three-album run in the 1990s with There's Nothing Wrong with Love (1994), Perfect from Now On (1997) and Keep It Like a Secret (1999), but I somehow missed all of it at the time. It was until 2000, when the band released their album Live that I got into them.
I was working at Webnoize and we had just moved into office space in Central Square in Cambridge. We had this funky Sun Solaris computer system that allowed us to have a shared digital music library we could all access, and somebody had put the Built to Spill live album on it. Their 20-minute cover of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" was what initially grabbed me, but then I listened to the rest of the album and realized this band was incredible, and that led me to dig into the back catalog.
Led by singer-guitarist Doug Martsch, the band has had an intentionally revolving lineup over the decades, which Martsch felt would keep things fresh. Built to Spill definitely has echoes of Young, especially in Martsch's high-pitched voice, his love for extended guitar soloing and the band's tendency to jam in concert (see "Cortez the Killer"). But the band also has its quirky indie edges that set it apart from Neil and Crazy Horse, which you can hear in bands that came later like Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie.
Keep It Like a Secret is an incredible album, and on it Martsch had decided to write more concise songs instead of the epics that populated Perfect from Now On. The opening track, "The Plan," is a great example of this, with Martsch, bassist Brett Nelson and drummer Scott Plouf packing as much awesomeness as possible into 3:29.
"The plan keeps coming up again/And the plan means nothing stays the same/But the plan won't accomplish anything/If it's not implemented/Like it's always been/And it makes me think of everyone/The cause of this is evident/But the remedy cannot be found/'Cause it's so well hidden."
Lyrically, the song is extremely economical, partly because the guitar solo is so great (the version on Live is even better).
"This history lesson/Doesn't make any sense/In any less than/10,000-year increments/Common sense/Common sense/Common sense/Common sense/Common sense."
The album was critically praised and debuted at #120 on the Billboard 200 chart. Built to Spill followed it up with 2001's Ancient Melodies of the Future, which I didn't like as much the previous few albums but was still enjoyable. I saw them for the first time at the Paradise on September 18; it was the first public event I attended post-9/11. They only played two songs from Keep It Like a Secret and only one from their recent release, but they played six covers, including Cheap Trick's "Dream Police," the Smiths' "This Night Has Opened My Eyes," George Harrison's "What is Life" and an epic version of "Freebird." It was a strange night just because of all the weird vibes that were happening in those weeks after the attacks, but it was nice to have a great band take our minds off that stuff for a few hours.
I had front-row tickets to see them with Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets in 2008 at the Orpheum, but had to give them up because we were going out of town that weekend. Still bummed I missed that show.
BTS (they're the true owners of that acronym to me, not the South Korean boy band) kept releasing albums and touring tirelessly throughout the 2000s, although the lineups continued to shift with Martsch being the only constant. The band was on Warner Bros. until 2017, a 22-year stretch that was pretty impressive considering they didn't sell a ton of albums. They signed to Sub Pop in 2021 and released When the Wind Forgets Your Name in 2022, which was a pretty decent album.
Kudos to Martsch for consistently making interesting music over the years. I hope to see them again someday.
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