Keep It Like A Secret

Product Description

For the first time with a set rhythm section, critically acclaimed Built To Spill has created its most accomplished and focused album yet. Possessing a collective unorthodox vision, the band's second album, Keep It Like A Secret, builds on the success of 1997's Perfect From Now On. Invoking less analysis and more volume, Doug Martsch, one of today's most influential, independent-minded musicians, has crafted shorter, more direct songs that revel in a literate expressionism rarely heard in alt-rock and yet still rock with the same visceral impulses. Built To Spill may not be a secret much longer.

Amazon.com

Most guitar heroes make their mark by doing something extravagant, like playing with their teeth or with their instrument in flames. Doug Martsch of Boise, Idaho's Built to Spill has acquired his guru status by simpler means--he combines his trippy, meandering guitar style with classic pop structures. Martsch also wins points for singing about small-scale moments as well as huge moral abstractions, from watching TV to contemplating the center of the universe. By subtly balancing the forest of dense guitars with Martsch's oddly prosaic yet uncannily beautiful singing, Built to Spill hold the rare achievement of making music that's rooted yet allows you to fly. "Time Trap" begins with a harplike guitar line floating above a heavy wave of distortion, drifts into a reggae pattern, and eventually rises to the high step of musical theater. The charming and funny "You Were Right" decides once and for all which of the classic-rock clichés ring true. "You were wrong when you said, 'Everything's going to be all right' / You were right when you said, 'We're all just bricks in the wall.'" It is a richly deserved analysis from alt rock's heroic Everyman. --Lois Maffeo

Review

Bless his bleeding old-school heart, Spill CEO Doug Martsch is still wanking merrily away, making the most beautiful baroque electric guitar murals in modern rock. -- Spin

Built to Spill make music with a weird naive excitement that recalls R.E.M. at their fresh-out-of-Athens finest. -- Entertainment Weekly, ISBN13: B00000HZFH ISBN10: B00000HZFH Material Type: audioCD