For a generation of indie rockers, Built to Spill’s 1999 record, Keep It Like a Secret, is one of the great heavyweights—often mentioned in the same breath as Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and Modest Mouse’s Lonesome Crowded West.
Situated between two longer, more meandering albums in the band’s catalog, Keep It Like a Secret (the band’s fourth release) plays out almost like a pop record—nimble, confident and endlessly resourceful, but also daring and transcendent.
In February, Keep It Like a Secret hit its 20th anniversary, and Doug Martsch, Built to Spill’s singer, guitarist and sole constant member, found himself revisiting the work.
“I think the record still sounds really cool,” he says over the phone from a Seattle green room. “I listened to it a little bit before we learned the songs. [Producer] Phil Ek did an amazing job recording it. It’s ambitious. I like that about it.”
On opener “The Plan,” the band spends half the song developing one of its catchiest hooks before taking a sharp turn, digging into a massively discordant bridge shrieking with feedback. When the melody finally returns, the song opens bright like a clearing in a forest. On mid-album highlight “Time Trap,” the band spends two minutes developing a groove, giving it space to bloom, only to stop abruptly and begin the first verse at a different tempo.
“There’s this balance in music,” Martsch says. “I don’t know how it’s accomplished, but I’m always trying to do it, where things are conventional and are pleasant to the brain, but are challenging, too. The Beatles did it, so it’s not a new thing.”
Keep It Like a Secret was the band’s second major label release. Their first was the ponderous, nearly doomed Perfect From Now On. Filled with interweaving guitar parts and sinuous counter-melodies, Perfect went on to be a critical hit. But by the time it was finally released, it had become something of an albatross to Martsch. After a painstaking original session that saw Martsch playing everything but drums, neither he nor producer Ek were happy, so they started over from scratch. After another full recording session, this time with a band, the master tapes from the second session melted while en route from Seattle to Boise. The version of Perfect From Now On most fans know is the result of a third recording session. By the time it was completed, the eight-song set had consumed most of a year.
“The record before was a real drain,” Martsch says, thinking back. “Working on those songs took so long. It became really complex and taxing. I was burned out.”
When time came to start working on its follow-up, he opted for its diametric opposite: shorter songs and more collaboration.
“I think it was the first time where we made a record where the guys were more set in the band,” he says. “We all played together a lot and had been for a while. It was more collaborative in spirit and music.”
Twenty years later, the album still sounds fresh, unperturbed by the changing currents of music in the intervening years. Counterintuitively, Built to Spill’s strange status as a major label band without any major singles may be the secret to its enduring success: rather than coming to the band from a specific single, fans tend to form connections with entire albums.
“We’ve been blessed to have a long career without any of the pains of success,” Martsch says as he prepares for the night’s show. “The fans who are there have found it on their own. Nobody shoved it down their throat at some point. Nobody’s waiting to hear just one song. It’s incredibly satisfying, the career I’ve been able to get out of this.”
Built To Spill
Nov 21, 8pm, $32
Rio Theatre, Santa Cruz
folkyeah.com
