Album: Live
Year: 1999
I’m not sure why I only as opposed to totally love Built to Spill. I mean, Doug Martsch is a Certified Guitar God who uses his talents to find cool weird noises to play as opposed to racing every song to the end. And anytime I concentrate on what he’s doing, I walk away completely impressed. So I guess that I probably don’t connect with the context of that guitar playing: the songs he writes.
That’s on me, but it also makes a song like “The Plan” doubly frustrating: it’s the perfect example of what can happen when he writes a song that I love. Like “The Plan,” which on Keep It Like a Secret,” packs in about as many guitar hooks per square inch as, say, “There’s A Reason” from Tom Verlaine’s Dreamtime.
But on the live album, not only are they able to recreate all of those hooks, Martsch eschews the slowdown closing for a long, gorgeous guitar solo that takes the song into a completely new direction, transforming it from near-anthem to full anthem.
“The Plan” performed live in 1999
My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:
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