Broken Dreams Club Interview: Built to Spill
Legendary indie rockers Built to Spill will be playing two shows at the Fillmore on Friday, September 27 and Saturday, 28. To mark the 30th anniversary of their beloved sophomore release, “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love,” the Boise band will play that album in its entirety each night.
Broken Dreams Club caught up with Built to Spill founder and sole permanent member Doug Martsch prior to the band’s shows to talk about his love-hate relationship with “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love,” performing in San Francisco and what’s next for the group:
You’ve been playing these “There’s Nothing Wrong with Love” shows for more than a month now. What’s that been like—have fans been pretty excited to hear this album live in its entirety?
It’s been really fun. It took a little while to get rolling with it. I don't know if we had as much rehearsal time as I wanted, but it’s starting to feel pretty good after a few weeks. It’s been cool having a cello player out here for this run.
So, you have a cello player on this tour? What is the tour lineup right now? Is it Melanie [Radford] and Teresa [Esguerra ] and the cello player?
Yeah, exactly. Mel and T and John McMahon on cello. It’s been awesome.
You’ve been approaching these shows with an interesting setlist—starting with a song not off “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” before launching into the full album. Any particular reason for that approach?
Yeah—that’s another example of where I wish that we had had a little more rehearsal time to figure out things. We played maybe a couple weeks of shows starting with “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love,” and then decided to mix it up a bit. I really like that it’s a way to warm up the show a little bit, and then you jump into the record. It’s a little more exciting. I wish we had done that from the beginning.
You’ve been so consistent with touring. I think you've played more than 250 shows over the past two years. How important is it to maintain that steady, live presence?
I think for me, it's just my job and what I do. That’s how I think of it. There’s something to playing a lot so that you're comfortable and playing at your best. We took eight months off and I feel like it took a little bit for us to get going again. I’m not sure how bands do it that take long hiatuses or just drop out of music, and then come back a few years later. I guess everyone has their own way of performing and their own relationship to live music, but for me, it would be really hard to pick it all up again after not doing it for a long time. I don't know—it just seems the more I play, the more comfortable I am.
Even after all these years, huh?
For sure, definitely. I'm not a real natural music person. It takes a lot of time for me to get into the zone.
Ok—let’s talk about “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love.” Last time I interviewed you, you weren’t exactly praiseworthy of this album. Have you softened a bit on it, since you’ve started playing it live in full every night?
I like the songs, for the most part. I just really don't like the recording. The guitars don't sound very good. I didn't play very well back then. I could just only play guitar enough to be serviceable. With my singing, it’s the same thing. There are a lot of things about it that I just feel like they are not very well done. I've improved a lot—at least in my own mind—over the years. But the songs are fun to play now. We do them our own way. The guitar sounds different now, and I sing differently, and I prefer it this way. I understand, too, how it's just a record of that time period. I'm not ashamed of it, but I'm not very psyched about it, either.
What was it like revisiting these songs? Some you’ve been playing live for years, but others you haven’t played much at all.
Well, I guess my thing is that the words and the chords and the melodies are all there, but the way that they're performed is different. I have a different way of singing, a different way of playing guitar, than I did back then. I changed a lot from doing it live over the years as a result of finding my voice and getting more comfortable with the guitar. I try and strip away parts of the songs that I don’t think are essential, but I’m not trying to be extreme like a Bob Dylan thing or something. Sometimes bands make a really cool improvement on their songs and their live shows, and I hope that's what we're doing when we do our old songs. Hopefully we're making them better, and not worse.
Not only did you record this album 30 years ago, but it certainly feels like the most earnest, almost whimsical Built to Spill album. Was it particularly nostalgic going back to these songs?
Well, there's really not much nostalgia. I don't think about how I felt at the time or what was going on in my brain, really. It’s more about figuring out how I can make it sound good today. And I don't really think about whether or not it transports anyone back. That's not important to me. What matters is making music that sounds good for me right now.
It also feels like the most autobiographical Built to Spill album. Songs like “Twin Falls,” and “Car” and “Distopian Dream Girl” seem to offer this glimpse into your life that we don’t often get to see. Do you consider this your most personal Built to Spill album?
I mean, it's not too autobiographical. I don't even have a stepfather, that was someone else. “Twin Falls” is not about anyone real, either. So, it’s not necessarily autobiographical, but maybe personal, maybe a little more earnest. I don’t remember the feeling that I had when we made the record too much, but I remember thinking that it was nice to make just a really sweet pop record, with lots of melodies and without any distortion. There's no reverb or anything. It sounds like a home recording at a time when everything was all about grunge and this loud rock stuff. I definitely felt like we were just doing something totally weird.
So, you didn't really have a stepdad who looked like David Bowie?
Nope. And “Car” is just a bunch of random words. Not much of it is really about me or anyone. I think there's a few songs that are about my wife Karena. “Reasons” is this pretty love song about her, and “Cleo” is about our kid being in the womb. “Israel’s Song” is a song that Karena wrote all the lyrics to, and it's about a kid with autism that she worked with a little bit. So it's kind of all over the place. “Stab” is not really about anything. I think it's just kind of nonsense words that sound serious.
And so, you mentioned, “Stab,” which is one of the jammier songs on the album, but “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” is generally known as the Built to Spill “pop” album. After writing this album, did you feel kind of freed up to explore the more vast, exploratory song structures you specialize in with “Perfect From Now On?”
Yeah, I don't know if it was that specifically. I feel like each record is a little bit of a reaction to what was before. There seems to be a little bit of that pattern. The first record, “Ultimate Alternative Wavers”, was more kind of jammed out, with a lot of improvising and experimental music and song structures. And so, “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” was really concise. And then “Perfect From Now On” is more of a reaction to that conciseness. “Perfect From Now On” was also about a bit of a fear of a record label trying to do something commercial with us, trying to sort of throw a monkey wrench into the things a little bit. My fear was being over-promoted. I mean, now I wish, I wish we'd done it, but I just did not want that at the time. The whole radio version of music didn't ever make much sense to me. The stuff that got played on the radio, it didn't really sound good to me.
I love “Hidden Track ” from “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love.” I’m sad I never got to the hear the full version of that song that starts “a man needs loving…” Where did that idea come from, to do that, like, fake preview of the next album?
I don't even remember. It was just this silly idea, and we were able to spend enough time to pull it off all right. Maybe I'll have AI do a full album from that one track.
“There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” obviously resonates with so many people. There are a ton of Built to Spill fans who consider this their favorite album. Why do you think it’s still special to so many people after all these years?
I have no idea. I remember when we made it, I was really proud of it and really happy with it. It was the first time that I'd spent that much time in the studio—that I finished a record and didn’t really feel like I had to go back and work on it some more. I felt so satisfied with the whole process and working with Phil [Ek] and the band and the collection of songs and the way it all fit together—it just felt like a big accomplishment, But listening back to it now, I wish I still felt that way. I really can't stress enough how disappointed I was to go back and listen to it over and over to prepare for this tour. I just, I don't really like it very much. “Perfect From Now On” or “Keep It Like A Secret”— those records have some similar things that I don’t like, but they’ve grown on me a little bit more. “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love,” for some reason—I just don’t connect. I know I’m not promoting this very much! I mean, I do remember when the record came out and people in Boise were hearing about it and stuff. It was kind of the first record that I made that had any kind of audience beyond my friends and family. Not many people listened to that first Built to Spill record—maybe a handful of people knew about it. So, all of a sudden, this one came out, and we were on the cover of The Rocket, which was really big in the Northwest, so that was super exciting. There was this one guy who worked at The Record Exchange—this older guy who was really cool—and I remember he didn't like the album. I couldn’t understand why at the time. But I definitely can see now how someone could be annoyed by the album.
You’re playing two shows at the Fillmore. Over the years, you’ve played in plenty of San Francisco venues. Where does the Fillmore rank among those sites? It’s a pretty special place.
Yeah, it might be my favorite place, anywhere. I love it so much. I loved playing at Slim’s, but no Fillmore is the best.
And you’ve never gone too long without visiting San Francisco. Do you feel like you always get a nice reaction when you come here?
For sure. It’s one of a handful of most important places to us.
You released “When the Wind Forgets Your Name” in 2022 on Sub Pop, which is just the perfect label for Built to Spill. Are you all working on material for a new album? Any updates on when we could expect that release?
No, nothing at all. I haven't really written a song in a long time, and even with “When The Wind Forgets Your Name”—a lot of that stuff was mostly pretty old. I don't know. I haven't been pushing myself or anything. I assume I'll write some more songs one day, but maybe that phase is over for me. But getting back to AI actually, I just downloaded an AI app and made a birthday song for my brother, and it was so incredible and weird. So, maybe it’s over for me.
Final question: what’s your favorite song from “There’s Nothing Wrong with Love?”
If I had to choose, I mean, my favorite one to play, at least, is probably “Some.” Just to noodle around with that chord progression that I think is so pretty. It’s kind of become my favorite one on this tour to play. It's a little too low to sing, but over the course of these few weeks, I feel like I have I settled into where I'm supposed to sing it where my voice feels right. “Big Dipper” is also a nice one. “Reasons” is one of my favorites. “Car,” is an interesting song, but I also kind of hate it.
Show Details:
Built to Spill with Quasi
When: 8 p.m., Friday, September 27 and Saturday, September 28
Where: The Fillmore
Tickets: $53, available here.