Built to Spill

Every once in a while I put my Zune on shuffle, and Built to Spill comes on and blows me away again.

A lot of the bands I got to know over the last decade or so, I got to know in a strange way, because I came of age musically at the height of the whole file-sharing thing.  So every band I got to know, I got to know one song at a time.  I didn't discover Magnetic Fields, I heard "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" and came back for more.

The best site of all was Audiogalaxy which was like Napster cross-referenced with Allmusic.  So I'd browse through the newly discovered genre of Indie Rock, and one day came across a band called Treepeople.  I think I'm one of very few people who got into Built to Spill by way of Treepeople, but I will say, when they wanted to be, they were a tremendous band.  They had this dueling guitars thing that put every other dueling guitar band to shame; Allman Bros., the Stones, Television - none of them hold a candle to the Treepeople's best stuff.  Their version of "Bigmouth Strikes Again" is the textbook for duel lead guitars, and by far the best Smiths cover ever.

So anyway, Treepeople had Doug Martsch as one of their two guitarists, and he (and Audiogalaxy) led me to Built to Spill.  Which leads me to the song that came up randomly on my Zune today, "Distopian Dream Girl" which should go down as one of the great songs ever.  The guitar riff is sort of reminiscent of "Electioneering" but for a power trio, the guitar work is sublime, from that Neil Young school of guitar playing.  The song is weird; the most famous line is "If it came down to your life or mine/I'd do the stupid thing/and let you keep on living" - but, and this is crucial, the line isn't played as an emo pity fest, but as a singalong.  It's bizarrely joyous.

I've got maybe ten or fifteen Built to Spill songs (I only bought one album, but for some reason, Built to Spill works for me best on a song by song basis.)  The first one, actually, I ever heard, was their song "Strange" which is, under it all, basically call and response guitar playing.  It's an excellent showcase of Martsch's lead guitar ability - one of his fills is literally nothing but two notes, an octave apart, with rhythmic variation.

The top five Built to Spill songs, ever, are: "Dystopian Dream Girl", "Strange", "Car", "You Were Right", and "I would Hurt a Fly."