Albums I Love: Perfect From Now On
There is probably no other album that has affected me as profoundly as Built To Spill’s Perfect From Now On. It is easily one of my top three personal favourite albums of all time. Back around the beginning of this decade, I got my first real exposure to indie rock as a great friend and roommate at the time would be jamming Modest Mouse and Built To Spill incessantly. At first I hated it, especially Issac Brock’s vocals. I talked so much smack about these bands, and then one day after listening to them over and over, something inside me clicked. Suddenly, the more I listened to those two bands, the more I enjoyed them. It was at that point where I lost interest in the jambands, classic rock, and techno I had been listening to after initially coming to college. These new bands I discovered seemed to have so much depth compared to everything else I had been listening to at the time, and I basked in the ecstasy that can only be felt appreciating music as art.
Simultaneously as I was starting to embrace and explore good, progressive music, I was also going through a period of self discovery and trying to figure out what my life was all about. At almost the exact moment I got obsessed with Perfect From Now On, I had a spiritual epiphany of sorts, and listening to this album was instrumental towards that occurring. While I know that Doug Martsch is always downplaying the importance of lyrics in interviews, PFNO is one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed concept albums ever written; metaphysically epic yet simple words armed with beautiful melodies and long, complex song structures that no other album, BTS or otherwise, has come close to reproducing again. While classics like Darkside Of The Moon and OK Computer dealt with similar questions central to our existence, they failed to provide any real path to deal with these issues. Perfect From Now On not only takes you on a similar journey of despair, but also contains a framework for addressing these problems. And not in a preachy, tell-you-what-I-think way, but in a more abstract method where different listeners can reach different verdicts based on their own interpretations and experiences. The music I love the most is the sort that can be successful and enjoyable on as many different levels as possible, and it is hard for me to think of another album that conquers the multitude of emotions and aesthetics that this one does.
I managed to snag some tickets for ATP New York and I am ecstatic to catch Built To Spill performing this album. If you have never listened to this one, obviously I can’t recommend it enough:
Built To Spill : Perfect From Now On : Kicked It In The Sun
“Stop The Show”:
“Velvet Waltz”:
Here is an instrumental jam session that Doug and Brett Netson did on Record Store Day in Boise, Idaho as a bonus:
DOUG MARTSCH & BRETT NETSON of
BUILT TO SPILL
19 April 2008
Boise, Idaho
Record Exchange
National Independent Record Store Day – In-store appearance
Sonic Studios DSM-6s > Sonic Studios PA-6LC3 (middle bass roll-off setting) > iRiver H120
No setlist – improvised jam
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3
Track 4
Track 5
Track 6
Track 7
Download Lossless Audio Torrent Here
- Posted by Davy Minor on April 28, 2008 at 3:56 am
