It has been a long road for Boise's Built to Spill. While nearly all of their Pacific Northwest, grunge-pioneering counterparts have either faded into irrelevance or overdosed on heroin, the permanent trio of Doug Martsch, Scott Plouf and Brett Nelson (recently joined by touring guitarist Jim Roth) have remained relevant post-Nirvana on the strength of broken, sprawling melodies and Martsch's confounding, inspiring, utterly incomparable song writing.
A lot was expected from their sixth studio full-length and fourth on Warner Bros. Records. The band has had nearly a decade to get used to the budget and expectations of a major label; "You in Reverse" was supposed to be a masterpiece of mangled indie-pop that made full use of the resources at hand but maintained the band's non-conforming sound. It's not. On "Reverse," BTS allow their instrumentation to run wild like never before, but with disappointing results salvaged only by Martsch's song writing.
Musically, Built to Spill take their boundless, unstructured style to an indulgent, unnecessary and regressive extreme on "You in Reverse." On BTS's seminal "Keep it Like a Secret" (1999) and "Perfect From Now On" (1997), the long songs felt deep and profound and displayed the band's terrific instrumental dexterity. On "Reverse," however, songs like "Wherever You Go" and "Conventional Wisdom," both clocking in at over six minutes, feel like little more than obscure guitar noodling and extraneous wankery. Sadly, many of "You in Reverse"'s songs suffer from a lack of instrumental discipline, and ultimately sound stale. Lyrically, though, it's a different story.
"Goin' Against Your Mind" cryptically begins, "People think when you don't understand / What it takes to outta be a man." As the song progresses, Doug Martsch coos more intriguing, baffling lines like, "Just a fight or just a waste of time / Higher queens that no one wants to find," between the repetitious choruses and long instrumentals that would be numbing if it weren't for the lyrics.
The first line of "Goin'"'s chorus features a more mellow tone, giving the words a forum to speak for themselves. "When I was a kid I saw a light / Floating high above the trees one night / Thought 'twas an alien / Turned out to be just god." If you can stick around for long enough to hear them, these feelings are true and easy to relate to.
Similarly, on "Liar," the first 25 seconds are sinister and haunting, but they pick up with a steady drumbeat and melodic riffing until Martsch tells listeners "to look out, the world's destroying you," and to "relax, it isn't fair." Again, the poignancy of the lyrics is disarming and transcendently applicable. It is writing to zone out to, to get lost in, and to consider.
"Saturday" shows Built to Spill's Beatles influence, blending together the Liverpool band's "Come Together" and "Something," but with an unconventional and awkward delicacy. The song is a welcome departure from the drum heavy, droning previous tracks, evoking Modest Mouse or a repackaged, grungier Monkees.
But overall, "You in Reverse" is a sloppy, unfocused musical mistake, which is disappointing in light of this album's potential. With their venerable veteran status, financial security and past indications of sheer brilliance, Built to Spill seemed primed to release a truly remarkable record, and they didn't. Still, despite its crippling shortcomings, Doug Martsch is such an intriguing and liberating writer that this album is a keeper just to hear what he has to say.
Who knows? With all the listens that his lyrics command, perhaps "You in Reverse" will prove to be a record that will grow on you.
