Catching Up With... Built to Spill

Paste: You’ve talked about how you’ve taken a different approach in recording your new album with equipment like ProTools. What’s that been like?
Doug Martsch: With ProTools we’re able to record where, after we got the drum and bass tracks done, the three guitar players could all sit in the room at the same time and play together. We could do take after take of three people playing guitar at the same time. With a tape machine you can’t do that.

Paste: Has it changed the way your band approaches its sound? You returned to a more experimental style of playing with You In Reverse, like your live performances, instead of the pop-centric stuff you did on your earlier albums. Is any of that going to translate to this new album?
Martsch: There’s a pretty wide variety of songs on it, partially because they’re songs that have been written over the course of a few years- songs from You In Reverse, maybe three or four from that were retooled a little bit. They seem to be slower, melodic pop songs, I don’t think there’s much jamming. That’s kind of what wasn’t happening when we were all playing together, there was just a lot of rhythm guitar.

Paste: Any plans for another solo album or more work with Boise Cover Band?
Martsch: Nah, neither of them. But maybe in a year or so we’ll try to get a Halo Benders [side project with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening] record made. We got together a year ago, or maybe two years ago, and started doing some things, but then our schedules got so swamped. We have the beginnings of a dozen songs, and I think five or six of them are really good.

Paste: What’s your take on modern alternative rock, especially because you’ve said before on numerous occasions that you’re not too hot on a lot of it? Is there anything you’ve heard or seen recently that you’re impressed by, or do you just tend to ignore newer music?
Martsch: I mostly just tend to ignore it. Not at all because there’s not good things going on, I don’t know why, I’m just not interested. You know, I’ve answered this question several times, and sometimes I’ll say the same thing, sometimes I’ll make shit up. Not on purpose, but just trying to understand it myself. I think what makes the most sense to me is that part of music is learning about the world, and learning about things, the same way that movies and books and TV and things like that help people learn about the world. When you’re young, you’re a sponge, and you can listen to things and learn a lot about the world. And I feel, myself, that there’s not a whole lot I can learn from some 25-year-old from America. Or the things that I could learn would be pop-cultural. But at the same time, you know, like the Arcade Fire- I thought that first record of theirs was really great. I didn’t learn anything, but it was great music. I never consciously, when I was young, thought I was learning things from music. As I got older, I guess I thought that might be the reason.

Paste: What are you listening to these days, then?
Martsch: I’m more interested in old soul music, or reggae music. Things that have a little bit of mystery, or are from a different time period. Not that I’ll learn anything from them, but they speak to me. I guess I kind of have this idea that people making indie rock these days, I don’t think that they’re vacuous or vacant or anything like that, I don’t think they’re any different than I am…

Paste: But it’s more image-driven?
Martsch: There’s some of that. I think there was a time when you could listen to music and you just listened to it and enjoyed it, whatever it was, like fucking 100 years ago. Someone would come through town with a guitar and you’d just sit and listen. Nowadays you’re just flooded with stuff, and you have to be really careful that it’s being done for the right reason. There are people trying to trick you, or fake you out, or ripping things off; it’s bullshit. It’s kind of a different musical atmosphere where you have to be careful or you get sucked into liking some bullshit.

Paste: What made you want to do an entire tour of Perfect From Now On? Was it the upcoming All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, or is this something that you had been kicking around for a while?
Martsch: We decided to do the whole tour because we spent a lot of time going back and rehearsing the album. We do a bunch of those songs but they’ve really evolved and been fucked up over the years. We also wanted to have John McMahon play cello with us.

Paste: McMahon is returning for the tour to play cello? There had been some rumors about that.
Martsch: Yeah. You know, all the work it’s gonna take to learn these songs and get John broken in, and then the work our sound guy Ian would have to do, dealing with three guitars and a cello and everything else, it just seemed like a lot of work for only one show. So, we decided to do the whole tour.

Paste: What made you want to add another month to the European leg of the tour? It seems like a lot to take on, especially with a new album in the works.
Martsch: We went over to Europe a year ago around this time. Since then, I’ve been checking to see when they want us to come back, and it ended up being this fall.

Paste: Does Built to Spill have the kind of following in Europe that you have in the U.S.? How does it compare?
Martsch: No, it’s a lot smaller. We went over there a few years after the band formed. We did alright, but I kinda didn’t want to go there. I wasn’t into traveling. It ended up being a long time, five years or something, in between our trips over there, and I think we squandered a lot of the interest that people had in us over there. So we’re trying to establish ourselves again and hopefully it’ll be a place we can tour again. Maybe a couple more trips and we’ll get invited to some festivals. It’s still fun though, the fans are great, it’s just smaller crowds.

Paste: How does playing at those big festivals compare to more intimate shows for you?
Martsch: You know, I used to hate festivals. The band’s a lot better than it used to be, though, and I think I have a lot more confidence that we can play bigger shows. For a long time I didn’t want to go on tour opening for anyone, I really liked playing for people who knew our music. A lot of it had to do with our first trip to Europe, which was opening for the Foo Fighters, and that was not very fun. It turned me off to the idea of opening for another band. I really wanted to play for people who came out specifically to see us play. But now I’m a lot more confident about our band, and I think that people can show up who don’t know anything about us and enjoy our music. That trip to Europe, opening for the Foo Fighters, people did not like us, it was very clear. But yeah, I kind of enjoy them now. It’s also a matter of juxtaposition. You play a few big shows and then you go to a shitty dive bar and it’s super fun because it’s different from what you’ve been doing.

Paste: And everyone is excited to be there to see you.
Martsch: Definitely. Of course, when you don’t even have a stage and you’re standing right in front of someone, that’s a lot more fun than standing 10 feet above someone.