January 25th, 1995 found me sitting on the uncomfortable floor of a cargo van mid-transit from Boston to NYC. There I was, happily groovin' to a friend's random mix, when IT happened.
IT would be Built to Spill. "Big Dipper," to be exact. I freaked out and made the road-trip DJ rewind it about 15 times. Sadly, that's pretty much all I remember about my 21st birthday.
Indulge me, I'm about to wax effusive. Let's just cut to the chase and say that There's Nothing Wrong With Love is that one-in-a-million perfect record. If you don't like this album, you are not my friend. It's just that personal.
OK, let's back up a bit, and start where I started, with the lyrics "Once/When I was little someone pointed out to me/ some constellation but the Big Dipper's all I could see/
The brontosaurus must have stood a thousand miles high/The brontosaurus layin' on it's side up in the sky." I'll give you a sec to re-read that. How about another snippet, where he reminisces about his childhood sweetheart from Twin Falls Idaho: "In 7-up I touched her thumb and/she knew it was me/although she couldn't see/unless, of course, she peeked." Clearly we are not dealing with your average lyrical wit. Let's say above average. He's positively poetical.
In short, you don't just listen to these songs, you read them; they tell stories rich in detail and deep in emotional color. And not only do they work as isolated short stories, which in itself is no mean feat, but taken together they advance the narrative and expand on recurring motifs, like chapters in a book. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts.
Yes, you say, that's nice, but what of the music? Rest assured, the music is both sublime and brilliant. Ranging from anthemic, screaming heavy metal guitars to angelic cello, replete with unpredictable chord progressions and time signatures, Doug Martsch composes songs that flout the rules of traditional song structure, rendering the words "bridge" and "chorus" virtually meaningless. They start when they feel like it, they end when they need to, mid-sentence if they must. They are complex, but never cerebral - never complex just for the sake of complexity, or at the expense of emotional accessibility. Every part serves a purpose, and flows seamlessly into the next, perfectly mirroring the emotional experience of the lyrics; and ditto for the instrumentation and production. You can't help but get sucked in so deep that the pictures he paints are so real they practically breathe.
Perhaps it's ridiculous to get this worked up over an album, but I ask you, semi-rhetorically, how often do you encounter something truly honest and original? All too rarely, we find something precious floating upon the flotsam and jetsam of the radio waves, or a gem among the shimmering drink coasters that pass for musical recordings. Once in a while we remember why we love music. And that, my friends, is why I love this record.
If you like There's Nothing Wrong With Love, check out:
Built To Spill Live
Built To Spill The Normal Years
Built To Spill Perfect From Now On
Built To Spill Keep It Like A Secret
Caustic Resin The Medicine Is All Gone
MK Ultra The Dream is Over
Granfaloon Bus Good Funeral Weather
Sebadoh The Sebadoh
Pavement Slanted and Enchanted
