Built To Spill - You In Reverse
By: Ryan Herzog |
Sunday April 30, 2006 |
 
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Genrerock PublisherWarner Bros. Records External Links |
Built To Spill's 6th full length You In Reverse shimmers like the silvery scales of a gutted fish left bloodied on a foggy fishing dock. Somewhere in the Northwest dusk the final flashes of a grapefruit sun splashes its pinkish hue across the curvature of the sea's forever-reaching horizon. It's a tingling glimmer of sparkling reflections and autumnal drizzle when Doug Martsch sings in a flowery blush "When I was a kid I saw a light/floating above the tree's one night/what was an alien/turned out to be just God," on the nine-minute opener "Goin' Against Your Mind."
Put a checkmark next to Built To Spill on your Lallapalooza lineup card. There is more going on in that first song than in entire albums by some. Built To Spill return from their five-year drought with a loose ten-song outing. The mood is mostly calm, a backyard patio in the countryside album with meanderings into hard chords and psychedelia guitar workings with plucks of mysterious sound fills.
"Forget about life for awhile...you see, that seems minor to me," Martsch sings in a calming tone to people getting caught up in the frivolities of everyday life on "Liar." The tone gets stepped up and stretched out on "Conventional Wisdom," with a Crazy-Horse guitar-god jam.
Things get a little long between "Gone" and "Just A Habit." Without a doubt, there is some excessive guitar work on You In Reverse but it never seems to rule the record, the high points reach mountaintops and the low points never sink into a lull inducing sedative stupor. There always seems to be something interesting going on with You In Reverse. You might not grasp it at all the first few times through but Built To Spill have made a grower and a keeper. Going back to this album again and again throughout the year seems to be a certainty, if only to listen to the highlight tracks and there are more than a handful of them on here.
