SOUNDTRACK: BUILT TO SPILL-Perfect from Now On (1997).
Built to Spill moved to the major labels and everything changed. No that’s not true. The band (well, Doug mostly) just sounds more serious about their music. What’s impressive is that there are no obvious singles since each song is over 5 minutes long (except for one).
This is considered a classic 90s album but fans of the band and others. And while I like it, it’s not my favorite. A few of the songs are a little too drifty and anticlimactic. But at he same time there’s some really amazing stuff here.
It opens with “Randy Describing Eternity” a cool song with a great riff and an interesting lyrics. My favorite song (most days) on this record is “I would Hurt a Fly.” It has a fairly quiet intro with more intriguing lyrics: “I can’t get that sound you make out of my head/ I can’t even figure out what’s making it.” The song waxes and wanes and even adds some cello. And then at 4 minutes, the song shifts gears entirely, stopping to add a brand new fast section with some great guitar work and wild noisy soloing.
“Stop the Show” is another favorite. It opens with a slow meandering guitar section and then jumps to a great, frenetic set of verses. After about 5 and a half minutes the song turns into a crazy noisy fest and then switches to an amazingly catchy guitar instrumental solo outro, which could frankly go for five more hours. “Made Up Dreams” has several different elements in it. And even though it’s only 4:52, it still packs in a lot of music.
“Velvet Waltz” is over 8 minutes long. It has slow parts, and a lengthy middle section with strings (in waltz time of course). It builds slowly adding some cool guitar sections and a great long solo at the end. “Out of Site” is one of the shorter songs on the disc. It has an immediate, fast section that is very catchy. It then mellows out to a slow cello-filled section. “Kicked it in the Sun” is kind of trippy. At four and a half minutes a noisy section overtakes the music, but behind the noise is a beautiful, pretty guitar/keyboard melody. Then it shifts out of the noise into a more rocking catchy section.
The final song is the nearly 9 minute “Untrustable/Part 2.” It begins loud with great lyrics “You can’t trust anyone because you’re untrustable.” Like the other songs it has several parts. Around 4 minutes it turns into another song altogether. This continues for a bit and then at 7 minutes it shifts gears entirely into a keyboard dominated romp.
There’s so many interesting melodies and changes in this album, and it clear that it was completely influential on late 90s indie rock. But I think what’s even more impressive is that each album get a little bit better.
[READ: September 29, 2015] The Complete Peanuts 1955-1956
Moving on to volume 3 of the Complete Peanuts. Stylistically things are advancing towards the Peanuts characters we know now. Yet they haven’t quite gotten there. I think the kids’ faces (not their heads, just features) are still much smaller. And Snoopy still looks like a real dog, although his nose grows year by year.
In the beginning of the year, there’s a funny line from Lucy, attacking commericalism. Charlie is reading her a book. He says “Once upon a time they lived happily ever after. The end” And Lucy says “What’s on the rest of these pages, Advertising?” Much later there a joke in which Lucy asks Schroeder how much a musician makes, and he relies “Money? Who cares about money? This is art. You Blockhead.” It is ironic of course that Schulz went on to become so staggeringly wealthy–but maybe that just shows what good art can achieve.
Another one of my favorite sophisticated jokes comes when Lucy is flying a kite. The joke is all about perspective. It’s hilarious. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 