It's May 1994 in Boise, Idaho—one month after the death of Kurt Cobain. Though this town is 500 miles southeast of Seattle, almost an eight-hour drive, that's not so far in this part of the country. You have your car, and everything is spread out, and you're always ready to cover ground when you need to. So despite the distance Boise could conceivably be considered part of the Pacific Northwest, if you stretch the definition a little bit, and the music scene there, such as it is, has some connections to its larger neighboring cities. There's a Boise band called Built to Spill led by Doug Martsch, who used to be in an indie rock band based in Seattle called Treepeople.
Two of the stories in the Pacific Northwest rock scene in the '80s and early '90s are the ramshackle D.I.Y. scene surrounding K Records and of course grunge, which by this time had gone so far overground it was on its way to becoming a cliché. Martsch's songwriting has some parallels with the wide-eyed and playful perspective of indie pop, but his twee impulses are tempered by his epic guitar work, which is not connected to grunge proper but can be traced to one of the scene's influences, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. Having made one album, 1993's Ultimate Alternative Wavers, Built to Spill return to Seattle to record their follow-up, There's Nothing Wrong With Love, the record that would change everything for the band. "That was the last record when I was able to make music without thinking a lot of people would hear it," Martsch told SPIN in 1999. "It makes a difference. I'd like to think it doesn't matter, but it does."
That relative anonymity, free from the nebulous expectations of what eventually became a sizable fan base, gave Martsch license to write his most personal album. There's Nothing Wrong With Love, newly reissued on vinyl after being out of print on the format for almost two decades, has come to define a certain strand of indie rock, leaving a cluster of threads picked up by Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and many more. But beyond its influence, it captures a truly original songwriting voice at the exact moment he realized what he had to offer. It's the album as snow globe, a small place where interconnected stories happen and you can get a different perspective on them depending on your vantage point. Built to Spill had some great records ahead of them, but they would never make another album with this level of intimacy.
There's Nothing Wrong With Love finds Martsch on the cusp of true adulthood (his first child was born around the time it was made, and his feelings around that are documented on "Cleo"), but the past is close enough where he sees it with tremendous clarity. The songs highlight the tiny feelings and sensations that have no obvious consequences in the moment but somehow stay with you in every detail. And Martsch has a special talent for pinpointing the tossed-off moments that others might connect to. As a kid, I was excited to learn about the constellations— where they were supposed to be, how the dots were connected, the mythology they represented—but I quickly realized the only one I could make out was the Big Dipper. I spent 20-something years with that meaningless thought pinging in my head, and then I heard a song on this album that started with the words "When I was little someone pointed out to me/ Some constellations but the Big Dipper's all I could see" ("Big Dipper") and suddenly this stray private thought became a shared experience, one wrapped inside an ultra-catchy power pop song.
Nuggets like this, borne of Martsch's keen sense of introspection and emotional generosity, are the lifeblood of There's Nothing Wrong With Love. On "In the Morning" he explores the difficulty of enjoying the present moment when filled with anxiety about the future ("Today is flat beneath the weight of the next day, next day, next day, next day") and how instinct takes over in moments of uncertainty. All the album's hyper-specific lyrical details—and there are many—check out. "Seven Up I touched her thumb, she knew it was me" (from "Twin Falls") might sound impossibly precious from another songwriter, but Martsch always leavens his sweetness with self-aware humor. "My stepfather looks just like David Bowie/ But he hates David Bowie," goes a line in "Distopian Dream Girl", certainly the first time in pop music history that this particular thought has been expressed. Then he follows with "I think Bowie's cool/ I think Lodger rules, my stepdad's a fool," showing just how in touch Martsch is with the feelings of adolescence, those years when you're floating through life, a bundle of nerves, and nothing quite makes sense.
The music and arrangements on the album are every bit the match of the subject matter. Built to Spill showed only hints of the explosive rock machine they'd later become. Acoustic guitar features heavily, a cello saws away in the background, serving as a sort of Greek chorus tracking the emotional arc of a given song's characters. Once in a while, Martsch hits the stomp box and unleashes a noisy solo, the distortion dusting his effortless melodicism with longing. There's plenty of open space, and his voice is much cleaner than it would be later. The sequencing and editing is brilliant, from "In the Morning"'s split-second pause after Martsch yells "Stop!" to the pause between "Twin Falls" and "Some" that makes them seem like one long song. It's a sound that is simultaneously tiny and huge, a keepsake tucked into a pocket that could at any moment magically become the size of a billboard.
With its focus on childhood, the nature of existence, and the search for meaning, it's possible to hear There's Nothing Wrong With Love in the terms of "What if there was another universe in my fingernail?"-style stoner dorm-room philosophy. But Martsch's open heart keeps you on his side. There's real beauty in the fumbling exploration he describes in "Car", a song filled with lines that crystallize what it's like to be an excited-but-frightened kid learning about life in fits and starts: "You'll get the chance to take the world apart/ And figure out how it works." Listening to this album in 2014, another line in the song, "I want to see it when you get stoned on a cloudy breezy desert afternoon," kept bringing me back to the final scene in Richard Linklater's film Boyhood, when the main character we've watched grow through the years takes mushrooms and hikes through a canyon in West Texas, a landscape not unlike parts of Idaho. It reminded me that one reason young people do drugs is because they offer a second chance to see things for the first time. To borrow one last line from "Car", on this album Martsch remembered when he wanted to see "movies of his dreams." For the vast majority of us that wish is never fulfilled, but There's Nothing Wrong With Love is a celebration of the desire itself, the vulnerability that comes with allowing yourself to imagine possibility.
