One You Should Know: Built to Spill

Thanks to my being surged to a special project at work, I've been holed up in the office basement the past month, putting in 30-odd hours of overtime during each of my six-day weeks. Thus the absence of posts, calls, or any other signs of life from yours truly in that span. (Which, depending on your viewpoint, could be a blessing I'm now shattering.) Unfortunately, things aren't expected to change any time soon, so it looks like we'll be testing the theory that less is more here for the near future. That said, I wanted to take a few minutes here to both implore others to make posts and recommendations -- I KNOW you people are out there, I can hear you breathing -- and to start another segment, that of the title. The thought with this form is to provide your own "greatest hits" tracklist for a band you feel everyone should know, and a brief explanation of why. I've been doing this for years on CDs, usually tacking them onto birthday or Christmas gifts for some of you, and thought this would be a perfect forum to put them on paper for others.

So, the first band to be thus honored here is Built to Spill, the best -- and only, I think -- thing to come out of Idaho besides potatoes. Formed back in the early 90s when grunge was still king and muddy, meandering guitar solos were all the rage, Doug Martsch grabbed a couple of friends from Boise and formed this band, a unique mix of knotty, intricate guitar parts and wistful, sardonic lyrics. Initially meant to be a rotating lineup of friends and musicians playing beside Martsch (a la Queens of the Stone Age for that band's front man, Josh Homme), the complexity of the songs -- with their slow buildups, sharp tempo breaks, and consistently changing melodies -- eventually became too tiresome and difficult to teach, so Martsch settled on a permanent lineup of guitarist Brett Nelson and cans man Scott Plouf for their major label debut.

Besides being an incredibly creative and talented guitarist -- Martsch's guitar parts continually shift and move, diving off down random melodic rabbitholes before coming back to the surface in the chorus -- Martsch's delicate, wisp of a voice beautifully marries up to the numerous melodies packed into each song. Unafraid of longer instrumental sections and songs that defy the standard verse-chorus-verse scheme, Martsch manages to avoid the excesses of other bands employing these weapons, keeping Built to Spill an indie band without the pretentiousness and a "jam band" without the pointless, self-important meanderings.

The songs chosen here are from their first three albums after their major label debut, 1997's Perfect From Now On, 1999's Keep it Like a Secret, and 2001's Ancient Melodies of the Future. It's a mix of all their strengths and represents the high points of each album, capturing the melancholy of Martsch's voice and lyrics and the heroics of his guitar work. Furthermore, I put them in reverse order, chronologically, so you build to their masterpiece off that 1997 debut, the blistering five-minutes of perfection, "Out of Sight." So load up your Itunes and get ready to enjoy...

Built to Spill:

1. In Your Mind
2. Alarmed
3. Trimmed and Burning
4. Don't Try
5. Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss
6. The Weather
7. Carry the Zero
8. Time Trap
9. Else
10. You Were Right
11. Temporarily Blind
12. I Would Hurt a Fly
13. Stop the Show
14. Out of Sight