Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop, Top Rated.
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Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
Doug Martsch hasn’t exactly been prolific since forming Built to Spill in 1992. Under the BtS name, just seven studio albums have seen the light of day. But given how good those seven have been, it’s hardly a quality-quantity ratio argument worth having.
There Is No Enemy is the band’s first album since 2006’s You In Reverse (which in turn was their first since 2001), and the first noticeable difference is Enemy’s more focused energy. In the album’s first half, anyway, Martsch seems a little more attuned to keeping things shorter and more accessible than previous efforts, but the results won’t upset BtS purists. ‘Hindsight’ and ‘Good Ol’ Boredom’ are both driven by what has carried the band in the past – muddy guitars, great lyrics and Martsch’s light melodies – at times sounding uncannily like Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips.
The album’s second half settles into some more familiar Built to Spill fare – longer, more meandering tracks that tack minutes-long instrumental breaks onto either the beginning or end of any given song. Occasionally in the past, that’s hurt BtS’s momentum. On There Is No Enemy, it just gives the listener a few more minutes to marvel, and hope the next album comes out before 2014.
