{"id":103,"date":"2008-03-04T11:29:29","date_gmt":"2008-03-04T17:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=103"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:01:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:01:53","slug":"built-to-spill-warehouse-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/built-to-spill-warehouse-houston\/","title":{"rendered":"Built To Spill, Warehouse Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Built To Spill<\/strong> are another band I can’t believe are playing venues the size of the Warehouse in Houston (albeit in the ‘Ballroom’ which is reasonably larger than the room I saw The Black Angels<\/strong> in).\u00c2\u00a0 They should be huge<\/em>, and playing to an audience of thousands, not the four- or five-hundred college students who barely filled the Ballroom.<\/p>\n

Support band was the Meat Puppets<\/strong>, who I knew nothing about save some notion of a tenuous link between them and Nirvana<\/strong> (which is itself not necessarily a good thing – Nirvana are horribly overrated).\u00c2\u00a0 Like Nirvana, there’s three of them (guitar\/vocals, bass, drums), but the music is very<\/span> different.\u00c2\u00a0 Wikipedia tells me that they come from ‘hardcore punk’ roots – they’re certainly a long way from that now.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that I’d call them mellow or anything\u00c2\u00a0– the power and noise is all there, and guitarist Curt Kirkwood can certainly play, laying down a fair barrage of guitar from beginning to end -\u00c2\u00a0but the sound strays pretty far from the basic rock template, borrowing heavily from country, and touching on rockabilly and even bluegrass on the way.\u00c2\u00a0 Although bassist Cris Kirkwood (brother of Curt) was firmly stuck in the ‘rock’ groove, looking as though he should have been playing in ’70s rock band Spirit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Midway through the set, the Nirvana connection became clear, as the band launched into Oh Me<\/em>, followed later by Plateau<\/em> – both songs covered by Nirvana on their Unplugged in New York<\/em> album (as well as Lake Of Fire <\/em>– also a Meat Puppets song).\u00c2\u00a0 Although these songs weren’t the best songs in the set (excellent though they were), they received the loudest response from the crowd, which suggests that everyone else’s knowledge of the Meat Puppets doesn’t stretch much beyond the Nirvana connection, either.<\/p>\n

After the power-trio Meat Puppets, Built to Spill took to the stage positively mob-handed, with three guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer.\u00c2\u00a0 And on top of that, they were joined by the Meat Puppets’ guitarist Curt Kirkwood and drummer Ted Marcus for the encore, extending their ranks to seven.\u00c2\u00a0 What I like about Built To Spill’s three-guitar sound is that unlike other bands with three or more ‘lead’ guitarists (i.e. beyond the lead guitar \/ rhythm guitar dynamic) – such as Lynyrd Skynyrd<\/strong> – the guitarists don’t take turns soloing in the spotlight.\u00c2\u00a0 All three of Built To Spill’s guitarists play at the same time, over and under each other, so you get this constant barrage of multi-layered guitar noise<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is just outstanding.\u00c2\u00a0 Really.<\/p>\n

That said, it is definitely Doug Martsch’s show, with the other guitarists watching him for cues – especially during his extended guitar breaks, when he’d be center-stage, eyes closed, ploughing away.\u00c2\u00a0 Vocally, I’ve always thought of him as being from the Neil Young high-pitched whining school of singing, but live he seemed much closer to Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie<\/strong> – still high, but much more melodic than whiny.<\/p>\n

The only time the vocals came down an octave was for a ripping cover of Third Uncle <\/em>by Brian Eno<\/strong>, where the\u00c2\u00a0vocals were just about barked out over a full-force guitar riff, the delivery closer to the 801 Live<\/em> version than the Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy<\/em> original.\u00c2\u00a0 People forget that Eno was a recording artist in his own right, and not just U2<\/strong>‘s producer and the guy who ‘invented’ ambient music, so it was good to see some of his rockier stuff being introduced to a new generation.\u00c2\u00a0 Built To Spill apparently have a habit of playing covers live – the first thing I heard from them was Neil Young<\/strong>‘s Cortez The Killer<\/em> from Live<\/em> – \u00c2\u00a0and unlike most bands, seem to actually improve<\/span> upon the originals (which should be the only criteria for cover versions).<\/p>\n

The highlight of the set came with the encore.\u00c2\u00a0 After a quick ‘regular’ song, the two Meat Puppets came out, and Martsch led them through an\u00c2\u00a0extended guitar work-out – four guitarists, a bassist, and two drummers, all pounding away, all seemingly ploughing their own furrow, but all still working together, interweaving their individual melodies and riffs, collectively building this awesome<\/em> pressure of sound.\u00c2\u00a0 By mid-way through this 30-minute riff-a-thon, the three Built To Spill guitarists were hunkered down by their individual monitors, twiddling knobs, punching effects pedals, and shaping squeals of feedback.\u00c2\u00a0 This kind of finale is apparently pretty standard fare for Built To Spill, but the poor Meat Puppet guitarist obviously wasn’t used to working so hard (they reformed only last year) and couldn’t keep up, reverting to wandering round the stage with a big grin on his face, just enjoying the spectacle.<\/p>\n

I was near the front of the stage, focusing intently on it all.\u00c2\u00a0 Those around me also had their eyes locked on Martsch as he fought with his guitar oblivious to the audience. I stole a glance behind me and was amazed to see that maybe half of the audience had left already.\u00c2\u00a0 ADD fools – they were missing the best part.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the most exciting live performance I’ve seen since I saw Frank Zappa<\/strong> covering Led Zeppelin<\/strong>‘s Stairway To Heaven<\/em>, with a five-piece horn section replicating Jimmy Page’s guitar solo.\u00c2\u00a0 No, really.\u00c2\u00a0 It worked.\u00c2\u00a0 OK, so maybe extended guitar freak-outs and 30-minute jams aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they’re certainly mine – I could have stood there all night, had the venue not enforced its midnight curfew by playing piped music over the top of the band in a bid to encourage them to wrap things up (which they did).<\/p>\n

All-in-all, it was an impressive gig.\u00c2\u00a0 I was a big fan of Built To Spill before I saw them; now I’m obsessed. I’ll be investing in the rest of their back-catalog at the earliest opportunity, and next time they play Houston (hopefully at the Verizon Wireless Theater, or Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, if there’s any justice) I’ll be first in line for tickets.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Built To Spill are another band I can’t believe are playing venues the size of the Warehouse in Houston (albeit in the ‘Ballroom’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigs","category-music","tag-gigs-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}