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closeWednesday, Oct. 21, 2009
Built to Spill tones down tempo, turns up melancholy
It may be that There Is No Enemy, but Built to Spill’s latest album has such a melancholy vibe, there may as well be.
Decidedly darker than 2006’s You in Reverse, the Boise quintet tones down its trademark guitar-driven rock on its seventh CD. Enemy is still a rock record, but the tempos are taken down a touch to carry frontman Doug Martsch’s musings on mortality and the meaning of life.
He opens Done with "Loneliness is getting hard to perceive/Seems it never comes or it never leaves," and closes with a refrain of "It’s already done, it’s already done."
"It doesn’t matter if you’re good or smart," he sings on Things Fall Apart, a languid tune punctuated by a lone happy horn.
But all is not hopelessness. Guitarists Brett Netson and Jim Roth, bassist Brett Nelson and drummer Scott Plouf get upbeat on Good of Boredom as Martsch sings, "Most of my dreams have come true." On Nowhere Lullaby, a slow track rich with reverb, he concludes "everyone gets through the night and everyone wakes up all right."
He takes the sentiment further on the album’s cheeriest track, Planting Seeds: "We can make it if we try/If we don’t it’s still all right/Because your mind is still alive."
There Is No Enemy, but according to Built to Spill, there’s still plenty to think about.
Download this: Oh Yeah
— Sandy Cohen, The Associated Press
There Is No Enemy
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