There Is No Enemy
Seasoned veterans of the indie scene, Built To Spill’s seventh studio album is as textured and sprawling as any of their best work, and that’s no easy feat after 17 years as a band. *There Is No Enemy* is surprisingly full of fresh ideas (shiny trumpets! willowy strings!), so don’t let the first track, “Aisle 13,” fool you. While it’s a neat and tidy BTS song that delivers the goods, it doesn’t offer anything really *new* — the song’s wallop would be felt more viscerally following, say, the mildly twangy “Hindsight” or the darkly beautiful “Nowhere Lullaby.” The somber strings on the latter and the slide guitar on the former make clear that this band is not resting on its laurels. Other highlights include the soaring “Good Ol’ Boredom,\" the bitter and raging “Pat,” the Neil Young/Crazy Horse-inspired howl of “Oh Yeah,” and the lulling and ruminative “Done.” As the set winds down, one gets the feeling *There Is No Enemy* is an expression, to some degree, of regret, or loss ... or resignation. Maybe the bright side is that great music can come from an early mid-life crisis.
Built to Spill arrest their 2000s slide with the unexpected There Is No Enemy, their best album in years.
Built To Spill’s 2006 album You In Reverse arrived on the heels of a middling solo LP from bandleader Doug Martsch, a turgid BTS record, and a long layoff, so it was an achievement just that Reverse felt like a proper Built To Spill album, filled with energetic, catchy rock and passionate, inventive guitar solos. For T…
Troubled throughout by almosts: almost sweet, almost catchy, almost pop, it is essentially not quite the album that it could be.
Indie rock stalwarts going back to the early '90s, Built to Spill have pleased fans for years, and their first album in three years, There Is No Enemy, occupies much the same territory as 2006's You in Reverse. Doug Martsch's absorbed and witty wordplay consistently turns lyrical convention on its head, the songs feature a parade of quirky hooks, and with its driving, accomplished backing, the band draws in a range of potential audiences, from its indie fan base to those who rock out to jam bands or don the headphones to dig into singer/songwriters. The always literate Martsch makes a virtue of steadfastness and reflection, the single "Hindsight" bemoaning those who wonder, "Is the grass just greener 'cause it's fake?"
At a time when a “Guitar Hero” is something your kid brother picks up at GameStop, Doug Martsch is a pantheon unto himself.
Built to Spill - There Is No Enemy review: Built to Spill return to remind us why they're still one of the best acts around.