Description:
Available on LP. "As a songwriter and guitarist, Built to Spill`s Doug Martsch has "a firm background in remembering," as he sings in "Bad Light," on the band`s beguiling new album, Keep It Like a Secret. Martsch`s zigging, zagging vocal melodies and explosive, loud-soft-loud hook dynamics are right out of the Pixies and Husker Du song manuals. There are traces of Lou Reed and the hyperwriting of `66 Bob Dylan in Secret`s lyric mix of run-on, conversational syntax and curveball wordplay . . .And if you break down the interlocking shimmer and sting of Martsch`s overdubbed guitars, you find an odd blend of precedents: the spiky, backwoods-existentialist phrasing of Robbie Robertson; Tom Verlaine`s silvery, spit-curl flourishes; the glassy strum of the Smiths` Johnny Marr. But Martsch`s particular genius -- which has slowly, assuredly unfolded in the course of Built to Spill`s four studio albums since 1993 -- is the vivid tension he generates between earnest romanticism and howling dischord..." David Fricke, Rollungstone.com (WEA)
