I hate talking about press kits, but I'm gonna drop the rule this time around. Press kits, for the uninitiated, are like a sales pitch. You get a letter from some yahoo behind a desk who has this neat band they want you to check out. To get you to do that, they also include various write-ups and reviews for a previous work or, in the case of a new band, loads of "Next Big Thing" accolades. Usually, a press kit is a dozen pages or less. The Built to Spill press kit, on the other hand, may be the next great American novel. First, a three page letter from the publicist. Secondly, an 8x10 publicity shot featuring Doug Martsch flanked by bandmates and sitting on a radiator playing a guitar. (I'm sure he plays on the radiator all the time, or so the world of publicity shots would have me believe.) Then, twenty-eight pages consisting mostly of unanimous rave reviews for their last album, the fucking awesome Perfect From Now On. Finally, a four page article from the new issue of Spin regarding the new release... which is somewhere in the envelope. I had to turn the kit upside down and start shaking until a white cardboard promotional CD case came a-tumbling out.
I put the disc in the player and began to leaf through the kit. Sure, I was just looking for my name somewhere in the clippings, and I suppose it would have helped to have previously written about them before. But that's fine because I can sit there and mock my fellow writers by playing the "Sounds Like..." drinking game or trying to find the biggest cliché of them all. The winner was a tie between Mr. Showbiz's Grant Alden, who referred to Perfect as "...less ebullient than its predecessor, and has a wry durability about itself, yielding polished gems..." and the usual hands- down winner, Will Hermes of the Village Voice, who actually managed to string together the words, "As far as rock goes, the stay- at- home types seem peculiarly American these days, a gesture from a post- grunge culture weary and dubious of being the biggest, loudest, and most important, just as current Britpop might be read, in part, as postcolonialist white British weary of apologizing for its history and looking to feel good about itself again" and call it a coherent sentence.
The one thread that held every single review and article together was how different Perfect was from the band's previous release, 1993's There's Nothing Wrong With Love. Love was built on short, sharp, and snappy pop songs, but Perfect was-- as everybody went on to note-- "epic." Indeed, the 1996 release had few tunes under six minutes and wove dense guitars, emotional debris, and schizophrenic song structures into something gorgeous and fascinating. As avid readers of music publications will note as the reviews trickle in, Keep It Like a Secret will be heralded for retreating back to the pop songs of Love while keeping a foot inside Perfect's scrimmage line of dexterity and guitar heroism. (My friends, I think when the next album's press kit arrives, I'm going to win my own petty game with that last sentence.) It also recalls last year's fine Halo Benders release, The Rebels Not In, the album Martsch recorded with Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson and former Spinanes and current Built to Spill drummer Scott Plouf. And that's not a bad thing at all.
Seriously, Keep It Like a Secret has already been spun at Club Jason five times within the past 24 hours. That's not a frequent occurrence-- not unless it really, and truly is, love. Doug Martsch just knows how to tickle me in all of the happy places, and he accomplishes that on the merits of the opening number alone. "The Plan" is a brisk, weaving anthem complete with a solo that would make Thurston Moore green with envy. "Center of the Universe," the second cut and first single, conjures up some XTC and a little bit of Barnacle Pete's finer sea shanties. And what have we here? It's the downright pretty "Carry the Zero," which merges Cocteau Twins- esque guitars and melody with equal sigh and much more articulate lyrics, none of which I'm going to quote to you. "Sidewalk" is classic indie rock in sound, classic rock in execution-- something I've been waiting a long time to hear.
Speaking of classic rock, "You Were Right" is a tongue- in- check number about spitting back classic rock lyrics ("You were right when you said all we are is dust in the wind/ You were right when you said that we're all just bricks in the wall"), although why he's doing it is a mystery. But it's a fun mystery. You know, like "Mystery" on PBS, only without that meddling Alistair Cooke. Believe me, if there's one man who can spoil a rock and roll party, it's that evil tool of the Mobil Corporation. Luckily, he's passed on, leaving Diana Rigg to run the show, and she's no match for Martsch. Keep It Like a Secret? No, at the risk of hopping on a cliché wagon, I think I'm gonna tell all my friends about Built to Spill. Try and stop me, Diana.
