One quick sentence explaining my mysterious absence: I lost my notebooks and I've had some pretty messed up stuff going on in my personal life that had me standing outside the Marine Enlistment office debating as to whether or not I should go in. Another sentence explaining my future plans: I'm moving to San Marcos in January, but will continue to cover music for alienated.org, I'll just be doing it from another city. No, I will not be writing anything about the tragedy that occurred last week...anything I could possibly say has already been said, and everything I feel has already been expressed...I cover music now, nothing more, nothing less. Moving along...
Built To Spill / Ancient Melodies Of The Future
Warner Bros., 2001
Since 1993, Built To Spill has put out six full length albums, one live album, a split with Caustic Resin, and made several contributions to compilation albums. They have graduated from the Indies to the big leagues in going from K Records to Warner Brothers (I'll not do WB any favors by linking to their site...besides, I don't feel like looking for their record label site right now...I'll give you the BTS site later). Through it all, one constant has remained in the band...Doug Martsch. BTS is Mr. Martsch's brainchild and, until recently (starting either with Keep It Like A Secret or Perfect From Now On, I can't remember which off hand...if I had my notebooks, I'd know for certain), had played host to a rotating door of a lineup. Loved by fans for such little slices of honesty-pop heaven as "Car", "Randy Described Eternity" and "Reasons"...lauded by music critics for continually finding new ways to stay the same all the while progressing to entirely new levels of musical genius...BTS has seemingly never done anything wrong...not even ditching their Indie cred for the more lucrative deal of making music for a major like Warner Brothers could do anything to keep people from having an infinite amount of respect for Martsch and whoever was playing with him at any given time. And if holding on to a top 10 spot on the CMJ Top 200 is any indication, Ancient Melodies Of The Future is no different than any other BTS offering.
Ancient Melodies isn't the longest BTS album to date, that much is certain. With it's 10 tracks coming in at just under 40 minutes, you're not going to have to deal with any feelings of impatience when trying this album on for the first time. The relaxed pop feel of Ancient Melodies will have you thinking that you've heard this all before...hell, "Alarmed" had me entirely tricked into thinking that I was about to hear some sort of slowed tempo reprise of "Kicked It In The Sun"...and that's exactly the kind of charm that BTS has in going from one album to the next...it all seems very familiar from start to finish, but it's unusually brand new at the same time. The albums all have themes unique to themselves to keep them separate from their brethren, but if you were to sit down and play each album sequentially starting with The Normal Years and going all the way through to Ancient Melodies (excluding the Caustic Resin split and the Live album, of course), having never heard any of them before...you would be hard pressed to tell where each album began and where each ended.
Opening with "Strange" and it's declaration of everything being strangely unique and oddly normal at the same time, Ancient Melodies launches into a wonderfully succinct journey into this largely unknown side of the pop world...a world filled with raucously relaxed music and intelligent and honest lyrics. Continuing on to "Alarmed" which is as much a lamentation of mistakes past as it is a subtle reminder to simply take things as they come and go from there. The distinct country sound of the guitar play on the album is particularly prevalent on "Happiness", which also has as much fun with the word happiness as "Strange" does with the word strange, and helps to remind the listener that this is a brand new album and quite different from any of the others...it's also that laid back country sound that helps Ancient Melodies to not feel as rushed and quick-paced as it really is...short songs feeling longer, long songs feeling just right. "Don't Try" is as much at home on this album as it would have been if it had been added to Perfect From Now On with it's sweeping instrumentation and lyrics like "everyone goes on and on"...that's not to say it doesn't belong exactly where it is, though. Further reprising the feel of albums gone by is the exquisite ditty "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss", which is by far the most up-tempo track on the album...as far as which album it could have been right at home on, you can pick between "The Normal Years" or "There's Nothing Wrong With Love". If you listen very closely on "The Weather", you can hear exactly why Doug Martsch's vocal stylings have drawn comparisons to one Neil Young...and I'll take a Neil Young sound-alike over a Bob Dylan-esque voice any day. This is one of the best albums of the year, hands down...smiting efforts from Weezer, Dave Matthews and Tool as 'most anticipated new albums' by familiar bands in my book.
While I'm not as much a fan-boy for BTS as I am for Modest Mouse or anything having to do with the Smashing Pumpkins, I'd be hard-pressed to find a band with better pop-sensibilities than BTS. If you find yourself with nothing to do come Sunday, September 30th...do what you can to make it to the BTS show at the Gypsy Tea Room here in Dallas...if you live in other cities, be sure to check out the Built To Spill website for stops that might be in your area. Check back in the next few days as I'll be putting up a delayed review of the newest Jimmy Eat World album...one that has been oddly vilified by long-time JEW fans out there for some reason or another (it might have something to do with them finally getting played on the radio and MTV...but I could be wrong). One last thing for the day...happy 21st CoCo...may this year be the best one yet...despite it all, I've got nothing but the deepest of loves for you.