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Built to Spill: Craftsmen of song

Band's polished latest album was put together meticulously in the studio

The Columbian
Published: July 16, 2010, 12:00am

Doug Martsch and his bandmates in Built to Spill came off of the road in 2008 thinking that if ever there was a time to record a CD live in the studio, it would be for the group’s latest CD, “There Is No Enemy.”

o What: Built to Spill, in concert.

o When: 9 p.m. July 16.

o Where: Wonder Ballroom, 128 N.E. Russell St., Portland.

o Cost: $20-$23 through Ticketmaster, 800-745-3000 or http://ticketmaster.com.

o Information: 503-284-8686 or http://wonderballroom.com.

“We’d been playing almost all of them (the songs) live, so we thought they were sounding really good, and we were sounding good as a band,” Martsch said in a recent phone interview. “So the original idea was to record them live, basically go set up in the studio and use all the live tracks.”

o What: Built to Spill, in concert.

o When: 9 p.m. July 16.

o Where: Wonder Ballroom, 128 N.E. Russell St., Portland.

o Cost: $20-$23 through Ticketmaster, 800-745-3000 or http://ticketmaster.com.

o Information: 503-284-8686 or http://wonderballroom.com.

That would have been a first for Built to Spill, which pretty much had recorded each instrument and vocals individually on its previous six albums.

But soon after starting to record songs live, Martsch, the group’s singer/guitarist and chief songwriter, decided the group had been taking the right approach to recording on its other CDs after all.

“It didn’t take long to start to realize they (the live-in-the-studio recordings) weren’t as interesting as we thought they were,” he said. “They weren’t very focused. There was a lot of rhythm guitar going on, and I don’t know, they seemed sort of like they didn’t have much personality or something.”

From the sound of things, “There Is No Enemy” didn’t come together without some time, effort and considerable sweat. Martsch said some songs took lots of revising and tweaking to create satisfactory versions. Overall, work on the CD stretched out over more than a year and a half, with the band spending a good three months of that in the studio.

Press materials for the CD indicate, in fact, that the project had Martsch wondering if he would bother making any more albums. Now Martsch says that feeling was just a reflection of the wear and tear of a long and involved project.

“I think that (the frustration) might be a little exaggerated,” he said. “I think it happens with any record, where you just become kind of burned out and you’re wondering why you’re even bothering doing it, all the things you liked about the music, you can’t even remember. … For me, there’s a lot of self-doubt about whether or not I should even be bothering to do this.”

Actually, Martsch said, he still loves the art of songwriting, and in fact, he took more control over the songwriting process for “There Is No Enemy” than for the group’s 2006 CD, “You in Reverse.” For that album, all five band members — Martsch, guitarists Jim Roth and Brett Netson, bassist Brett Nelson and drummer Scott Plouf — got together for jam sessions and wrote the songs together from the ground up. It was the first time Martsch had opened up the writing process in that way.

For “There Is No Enemy,” the rest of the band didn’t get involved until the arranging and refining stages of developing the songs.

“Most of these songs, maybe all of them, were things that I wrote,” Martsch said of the songs for “There Is No Enemy.” “But they’ve all been played by the band, treated by the band, quite a bit.”

The return to a Martsch-centered writing approach yielded a CD in “There Is No Enemy” that feels more concise and crafted, as well as more ornate — and perhaps prettier — than “You in Reverse.”

Highlights of the new CD include the opening track, “Aisle 13,” which is marked by its angular and off-kilter guitar hook and intertwining leads; “Life’s a Dream,” which builds from a suitably tranquil start into a lovely chorus with a layered Beach Boy-styled harmony vocal; and the CD’s closing song “Tomorrow,” a driving rocker that sounds both epic and tightly constructed as it reaches a thrilling, guitar-drenched song-ending crescendo.

“With the record before (‘You in Reverse’), there was a real conscious effort to make it sound kind of weird and jammed out,” Martsch said. “We left a lot of weird things in there because that’s how the songs were created and that gave us some kind of energy. And with this record, it seems more like, not pop songs, but more structured, conventional songs or something.”

Even though the songs from “There Is No Enemy” are fresh for Martsch and his bandmates, he said he expects the band will not over-emphasize the new material in its live set.

“I think we’ll mix it up and play a bunch of stuff from all of the records,” Martsch said. “I like to play stuff that people like, that people are familiar with. That to me is kind of the best part of music, to hear songs that you know from your life, that mean something to you.”

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