Built To Spill Succeed By Playing What They Want

Lee's Palace

Toronto, ON

on Oct 6 2009

Ian Gormely (CHARTattack)

10/07/2009 4:11pm

No one really expected much from Built To Spill leading up to their record release gig at Toronto's Lee's Palace. Although they delivered a pair of the '90s best records in 1997's Perfect From Now On and 1999's Keep It Like A Secret, the new century has not been kind to the Idaho five-piece.

Ancient Melodies Of The Future and You In Reverse increasingly focused on group mastermind Doug Martsch's guitar histrionics over songwriting. Even the band themselves seemed to bow to this reality, playing their 1997 high-water mark in its entirety on their 2008 tour. These days, it seems the people want the old classics, not new cuts. That their new album There Is No Enemy is awesome is beside the point.

Openers Disco Doom paid some serious lip service to the headliners' enduring influence. The Swiss four-piece sounded so much like the night's headliners, I honestly thought Built To Spill had gone on early.

Not that the similarity is a slag against the quartet. What better audience to embrace noodley '90s indie rock than Built To Spill fans? Although the band played with tremendous intensity, which went a long way to winning over the crowd, the between song delays seriously hindered any attempts to build momentum.

After an agonizingly long wait, Built To Spill hit the stage, but proved to be in no hurry to start the show. They settled into a quick groove after a couple minutes of pre-emptive whoops and hollowers. After another long tuning break — something that would become something of a theme throughout the night — they dropped the first of four tracks from Keep It Like A Secret, performing "Center Of The Universe" to rapturous applause.

New tracks like the wonderful "Hindsight" received similar responses, surprising even the people who were hooting and hollering. In fact, while most of the crowd seemed intimately familiar with certain records in the band's catalogue, few appeared to know the bulk of the songs. Yet after each face-melting solo there was sheer awe on everyone's faces.

After ripping through "Carry On," the band retired backstage momentarily before delivering a three-song encore that included "You Were Right" and an absolutely blistering rendition of "Goin' Against Your Mind."

Having visited almost every phase of the band on their own terms, Martsch and company were able to appeal to every type of fan while simultaneously hipping them to songs they never knew they loved so much. This is a band who built their reputation by doing things their own way at their own pace, and this night only proved nothing has changed.