Built To Spill - Keep It Like A Secret (Album Review)

 

Built To Spill - Keep It Like A Secret

(1999)


My copy: 2014 reissue by Music On Vinyl. 


Doug Martsch’s second record for Warner Bros. saw the band attempting to streamline the grandiose melodic weaves of Perfect From Now On, focusing more on rapid-fire indie-psych jams with punchy hooks and brighter tones. While Keep It Like A Secret feels less patient and perhaps less elegant, it is arguably the more meticulous album for cramming many prog-like structural changes into shorter songs. 

“The Plan” rockets up and crashes down like an extreme see-saw, shedding cleaner tones for splintering effects that shift the mood away from its initial light-heartedness. The split-second attitude changes are an integral feature here, as they give the album a unique personality compared to the longer, more calculated songs of the previous album. “Center Of The Universe” is a bending and irresistible groove with a perfectly snarky vocal performance from Martsch, whose voice suits both emotional bellyaching and sarcastic indie grit. The tender melancholy of “Carry The Zero’s” main riff goes well with Martsch’s honest delivery, making this one of their easiest singles to swallow, even as it rides drum crescendos into new riffs atop an extended bridge. 

The snappy melodies and sunny guitar lines of “Sidewalk” are maybe a bit too innocent sounding for the man who also penned “I Would Hurt A Fly” but “Bad Light” corrects the course with some well-measured bitterness and an addicting bassline. “Time Trap” beautifully builds into a black hole of tremolo and hammering rhythms before totally resetting into airy indie rock, though with the ethereal slide guitar continuing as the tune again builds pressure in its second half. “Else” owes its success to the steady repetition of the rhythm section, which gives the wavering, ghostly guitar ample room to bend through. The soloing and headbanging drums on “You Were Right” are a nice kind of indulgent, crashing against one of Martsch’s most touching displays on the record. 

Slide guitar issues siren calls across “Temporarily Blind” which bubbles over frequently into stripped down instrumental breaks. “Broken Chairs” holds the longest bout of repetition, as the song gradually becomes more and more untethered, careening far from its original melodies with guitars unraveling into mournful shrieks as the music slowly dies out. The vinyl includes bonus track “Forget Remember When,” which engages in some clever uses of dissonance but is much less effective as a closer compared to “Broken Chairs.”

Though Martsch’s early post-hardcore-touched ideas were undoubtedly being peeled back in favor of succinct, catchy writing, the arrangements for guitar were becoming more and more impressive. Some of the guitar soloing becomes carried away, but the production compliments this, and allows the music to feel adjacent to psychedelic or jam music (without all the fluff). Keep It Like A Secret isn’t quite as creative or emotionally gripping as Perfect From Now On, but it is a powerful example of Martsch’s masterful songwriting skills.

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