Built To Spill at the Electric Ballroom

Built To Spill
Disco Doom
Electric Ballroom, 23 September 2013

I don't think they could have picked a more suitable support act for Built To Spill tonight than Disco Doom. Hailing from Zurich, Switzerland, they've obviously been hugely influenced by bands like Dinosaur Jr, Superchunk and, yes, Built To Spill, mixing heavy distorted guitars with noisy solos and melodic vocals. Apparently the band (essentially a duo made up of singer/guitarist Gabriele De Mario and guitarist/vocalist Anita Rufer, although tonight they also have a drummer and bassist) have been going since the late 90s but they are only about to release their third album. Since it comes on the wave of the 90s revival they fit nicely in. Tonight though their set is a little overlong, if it had been about 10 minutes shorter I probably would have been raving about them but they started to drag for me near the end, so I'll merely say they were pretty good.

As I wrote on this blog recently, I first saw Built To Spill back in the mid 90s supporting the Foo Fighters, my main memory of their set being singer/guitarist Doug Martsch's impressive beard and the fact they had a cellist to help them on many of the songs. There's a vastly different and expanded line-up tonight with Martsch being the only original member left, not that it makes much difference as the band has constantly changed over the years and really was always about Martsch's songwriting, amazing guitar playing and unique vocals anyway, all of which are on top form tonight.

In true punk rock style each member of the band sets up and tunes their instruments before their set and then when they ready, Martsch just gives a thumbs up to the sound guy and the show just starts in a nice natural unpretentious way with one of their earlier songs, Three Years Ago Today, from their first album Ultimate Alternative Wavers. The whole show is pretty much a dream come true for any fan as, without a new album to sell (their last one There Is No Enemy came out four years ago), they instead give a brilliant overview of their entire career with the songs split pretty evenly between albums. Since my favourite album has always been There's Nothing Wrong With Love it was pretty thrilling for me only a couple of songs in when we were treated with In The Morning and Reasons, both of which sound as fresh and brilliant today as they did back in the 90s. I would have loved to have heard Car, my absolute favourite song from them, but given how great the setlist was overall it's pretty hard to complain.

The main set ended on an incredible version of Keep It Like A Secret's Carry The Zero, which built into a mass of Mascis-like guitars: having three guitarists certainly helped creating this beautiful wall of sound and almost Thin Lizzy-esque guitar licks at one point. When the band left the stage I wondered whether there would be an encore as it was drawing near the curfew but loud cheers of "One more song!" drew them back to play two covers, firstly a surprisingly good (Don't Fear) The Reaper and then The Smith's How Soon Is Now, which I usually hate being covered but I must admit Martsch and co made a pretty good go of it. I must also mention just how adept the band were at changing strings that were broken during the concert, sometimes even during a song was playing! Guitar techs, who needs em. Throughout the gig I also was struck how much Martsch looked like an indie rock version of Jim Henson, which is actually kind of cool (to me anyway).

So all these years on I finally got to see Built To Spill again and I have to say they were even better than I remembered.