Untethered Moon is the first Built to Spill record Doug Martsch has released in six years, and its existence alone is a mild surprise. His last LP, 2009’s There Is No Enemy, was quietly better and more focused than its two predecessors, but it didn’t get much attention from press or long-term fans. Martsch didn’t tour behind Enemy for three years, and when he spoke to Pitchfork in 2013 he admitted to feeling directionless. "It’s hard getting older, thinking maybe I’ve run my course," he said. In between then and now, another record was recorded and scrapped.
Built to Spill albums have themes, but they fit loosely, like the stretched-out tees and flannels Martsch wears onstage. Perfect from Now On was cosmic; Keep It Like a Secret explored miscommunication; There Is No Enemy seemed haunted by personal loss, unspecific but sharply painful. ("It doesn’t matter if you’re good or smart/ Goddamn it, things fall apart"). Untethered Moon also has a theme, and it’s one he spells out early: "I found a place where I know I’ll always be tethered/ And I knew, when I woke up, rock and roll will be here forever," he sings on "All Our Songs". On the modest arc traced on Moon’s 10 songs, a diffident soul finds his faith restored and his soul lifted by the music he’s loved his whole life.
This is the point to note that if you’ve loved Built to Spill’s music your whole life, Untethered Moon will have this same comforting, classic feel. In the mid-'90s, as his band and his vision took form, Martsch was a restless tinkerer, one who would throw together different versions of his band each time out, and for a while you never quite knew what shape or size or tone Built to Spill albums would take. There was something thrilling about that, and since the band settled into its current sound around the turn of the millennium, I’ve never quite stopped missing it.
Still, the familiarity of Built to Spill is a balm, and hearing Martsch fiddle with his main melodic ideas is like visiting cousins: everyone’s older, no one’s much different, someone’s hair is longer or shorter, someone’s brought a different girlfriend. Martsch is still messing around with unexpected ways to fit together guitar rock songs—on "All Our Songs", everything drops out for him to play a little three-note figure surrounded by silence, and then he brings the band back in with a pedal stomp. "Living Zoo" works an extended lyrical metaphor ("Being a human/ Being an animal, too"), as the tempo quickens and drags, the guitars twirling overhead like multicolored kites.
There are new moments and darker colors here if you listen closely for them. "On the Way" feels like a song form Martsch has never tried, with female backup singers, a walking bass line, and a cloudy sense of menace. The loosely dub-inflected "C.R.E.B." (Martsch was threatening a Built to Spill reggae album for a while last decade) is pained and even a little bleak, a welcome reminder that there are shadowy spots in the bright open spaces of his music. "I never meant to forget you/ I always forget people I really love/ If I haven’t seen them for a long time/ And I haven’t seen you for a long time," he sings, a moment where you can hear and feel some internalized regrets and emotions surface.
In general, the higher the emotional stakes, the better Martsch gets; you sense that he could jam out a passable Built to Spill album in a few weeks if he wanted to (and that’s exactly what it seemed like he did with 2001’s Ancient Melodies of the Future and 2005’s You In Reverse). There is even some audible self-deprecation creeping into his song titles: On There Is No Enemy, he offered us "another nowhere lullaby" ("Nowhere Lullaby") and on Untethered Moon he gives us "All Our Songs" and the shruggingly titled "Some Other Song". On "Another Day", he frets over "an obsolescence no one would plan." It sounds like a world-beating talent recognizing his own limitations, deciding whether or not to make something good or something great. There will always be flickers of the latter on Built to Spill’s albums, and if there are only four or five them here, they are bright enough to reassure that Martsch is probably not going anywhere, and that he’ll continue to grace us, every once in a while, with his unassuming, inscrutable presence.
