Last night I saw Built to Spill for the third time in the past 3 years. The first time I saw them at Lollapalooza and they were supporting You In Reverse, the second was in Boston when they were just touring for the sake of touring, and this third time they played Perfect From Now On in its entirety. This was the first time that had gone to an album show. I sort of have mixed feelings about the concept. On one hand this can really emphasize the importance of the album and PFNO is one that needs to be emphasized as an album. On the other hand, I like when a band is able to pull out some old songs from their earlier albums and hearing their new interpretation of an old song. The best part about the second time I saw Built to Spill was they got to play whatever they wanted with no pressure to play songs from their newest album.
Last night’s show, however, was very good. There were 3 guitars, bass, cello, synthesizer, and drums. Their sound was nearly as full as it was on the album. They played everything almost exactly how it sounded on the album, but in this case it’s a good thing. I also picked up this little newspaper type thing that explained the album with little interviews with all the band members. Doug Martsch described “Randy Describes Eternity” (my favorite song on the album).
“When I was in junior high school I went to a youth group called God Squad. Every Tuesday night we’d meet at the First Baptist Church, play foosball, go to McDonald’s, and hang out with Randy, a friendly, charismatic Christian. He told us this metaphor for eternity which struck me not because it drove home how long my suffering or joy would last after my death, depending on whether or not I accept Jesus as my savior, which was his intent, but because I thought it was a such a frustrating concept – the futility of trying to wear down a planet-sized metal ball by swiping it periodically with a feather. When Phil [Ek] was mastering it the engineer asked how many girls were in the band.”
Though they didn’t just play the album; immediately after they went right into “Goin’ Against Your Mind” for probably about 10 minutes. The came out for a little encore of “Big Dipper” and “Car” off of There’s Nothing Wrong With Love. This show was a great reminder of how much I enjoy Built to Spill and I like music in the first place.
MP3: Built to Spill -Â Randy Describes Eternity