In 1997, Boise, ID, guitar-stretchers Built to Spill released Perfect From Now On, a sprawling record that patches together bits of Neil Young guitar, Pink Floyd atmospherics and singer Doug Martsch’s star-gazing lyrics, with melodies to match. Though they had already released a couple of well-received indie pop records that caught the ear of Isaac Brock, who went on to form Modest Mouse, it was Perfect From Now On that launched Built to Spill into the realm of Important Indie Rock Bands. That record, along with follow-up Keep It Like a Secret, established Martsch as the genre’s only active guitar god, the one guy besides J Mascis who could trill into a wah solo and actually get the tight pants shaking. The centerpiece of 2000’s Live is a twenty-minute version of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” that more-often-than-not surpasses the original in its spacy noodling. In 2006, the group released You in Reverse, which, while lacking the slick melodies that so define Perfect and Secret, shows that Martsch’s ability to experiment with song structure without losing pop sensibility has only grown in the ten years his band has been on Warner Brothers.
