Modest master

Built To Spill's guitar heroics

by Matt Ashare

Three months ago Built To Spill's Doug Martsch had the honor of being compared favorably, by the Sunday New York Times, with some of rock's undisputed guitar heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page. It was a fair assessment of what Martsch has accomplished over the past five years as the leader and sole permanent member of Built To Spill, and a reasonable reaction to the gorgeously warped guitarscapes of the band's then-new major-label debut, Perfect from Now On (Warner Bros.). But when I spoke to Martsch a couple weeks ago from his home in Boise, he went out of his way to deflect such praise: "All of the kick-ass guitar playing on the record is Brett Nelson's. Brett's magical."

Denials aside, Martsch is a guitar hero. But he's one of the more modest masters to make his mark in quite some time. A week ago Thursday at the Middle East in Cambridge, he proved it in an hour-plus set with the latest incarnation of Built To Spill -- Spinanes member Scott Plouf on drums, Brett Netson (not Nelson) on bass, and Martsch himself as the lone guitarist/singer. Although they played only segments of two of the epic tunes from Perfect from Now On -- the last half of "Kicked It in the Sun" and the beginning section of "Untrustable/Part 2" -- the low-key performance was punctuated by impassioned outbursts of Martsch's high-wire soloing, culminating in a wonderfully long and winding 20-minute jam. Yet the set ended not with Martsch unleashing one last heroic moan or squeal from his Stratocaster, but with him watching from the sidelines as his friend from the opening band, Satisfact guitarist Matthew Steinke, finished what Martsch had started.

That unusual move, and much of what Martsch is coming to stand for, is emblematic of the self-effacing discretion favored in the indie-rock underground from which Built To Spill have quietly emerged. It's a philosophy, or at least a loose set of values, that's reflected in Martsch's decision to work under the name Built To Spill instead of as a solo artist. Consider also his enigmatic lyrics ("Every thousand years this metal sphere, 10 times the size of Jupiter, floats just a few yards past the Earth," he sings on "Randy Described Eternity"), his idiosyncratic strangled whine of a delivery, and his unique ability to deconstruct pop conventions without removing crucial hooks and melodies. It's all made him one of the year's more fascinating and promising talents.

Martsch got his start as one of two singer/songwriting guitarists in Seattle's Treepeople, a grungy punk foursome with a range broad enough to incorporate straight covers of David Bowie and the Butthole Surfers. Showing characteristic humility, Martsch says he doesn't think he's "improved as a songwriter since Treepeople." And Treepeople were probably better than many gave them credit for. (Built To Spill fans should make a point of seeking out the K Records re-release of the group's 1991 disc Guilt Regret Embarrassment next month.) Yet over the course of five Built To Spill CDs in just as many years Martsch has grown -- not just as a songwriter, but as a guitarist capable of orchestrating expansive and expressive fits of luminous, often chaotic beauty. (Imagine what J Mascis might have accomplished with Dinosaur Jr. if he hadn't settled into his current creative rut after 1988's Bug and you'll have a sense of the kind of progress Martsch has made.)

Perfect from Now On is a challenging triumph of Martsch's skewed vision. The disc's eight tracks, the shortest of which clocks in at just under five minutes, the longest at 8:53, rarely do what you'd expect. Soft-focus, mid-tempo psychedelic swirls morph into faster, hard-churning storms of abraded powerchords; verses switch places with choruses and disappear into deep chasmic refrains of squealing wah-wah guitars; and on "Stop the Show," a gently amorphous intro builds for three anxious minutes, fuses with a quirky staccato pop riff, and then gives way to one of the disc's catchiest melodies, which quickly fades into silence.

The result brings to mind a line from Built To Spill's 1994 disc, There's Nothing Wrong with Love (Up): "I wrote a song/It was slow and long/I wrote the words and the music wrong/But life goes on and on and on and on." Innovation in rock often has more to do with making something previously thought of as "wrong" sound right than with doing the "right" thing better than the next guy. It's what Martsch accomplished on Perfect from Now On and on stage at the Middle East last week -- and it's what makes him a real guitar hero.