There's Nothing Wrong
With Love
Built to Spill
Up, 1994
Reviewed by
Troy Carpenter
Doug Martsch's second album with Built To Spill is a model of '90s guitar
pop, full of cute little rock guitar epics, and graced with the innocence that comes with
not knowing you have an audience yet.
In contrast to some of the darker and longer tunes from BTS' overlooked debut Ultimate
Alternative Wavers, the 12 songs on There's Nothing Wrong With Love are
built tightly around pristine pop hooks spiced with crafty guitar solos and Doug's
endearing child-like voice.
Whereas follow-up Perfect From Now On would establish Martsch as a latter-day
garage guitar god, Love is more concerned with presenting his knack for melody.
Yes, Martsch's many complementary guitar parts still dominate the record. But most of his
epic freakouts are contained, only coming to play when they are truly needed to assist the
songs' development, not to take complete control. In a few spots, you can even hear
tension-free spaces in the sound, something the production-obsessed Martsch has not really
let happen since.
Love is, in essence, the sound of a bunch of friends holing themselves in one's
basement for a year to create the perfect pop album. Martsch's distaste for touring
brought him to the point of becoming a musical hermit - recording songs in his house
with friends from Idaho.
For Love, he re-recorded two of his most unassuming pop singles from his early
years as Built To Spill - before he was seduced by his own basement wall of sound:
"Car" gets the pristine treatment it deserves here, Martsch's classic melody
fully evolving with strings and crisp production. The tune gets promptly inserted into the
rock annals as a candidate for the perfect 3-minute pop song. Martsch's lyrics, daydreamy
and plaintive, come to an apex as he croons "I want to see movies of my dreams".
"Some," on the other hand, ends up a six-minute epic coda to the softest melody
on the record. The tune retains its glorious hammer-at-classic rock progression, but it's
cleaned up enough to sit right behind the wistful strumming of "Twin Falls,"
where Doug brings us back to his childhood with hometown memories of playing
"Seven-Up".
The hidden track "previewing" the next BTS record (four short humorous song
snippets) closes the album, but Love's actual last track, "Stab," is
the real preview. The song's sublime minor-key melody and seductive rhyme scheme lend a
dark edge to the mostly uplifting strains of the album, and the song soon melts into a
3-minute over-the-top guitar dominated section cleft in the middle by soggy strings.
Martsch ends the record proper with a swirling sonic assault, hinting at the epic rockers
of Perfect.
Like rock's most compelling artists, Martsch has the ability to create art that is
simultaneously appealing on personal and universal levels, cognitive and visceral. His
guitar playing is alive, and his melodic sense appeals to the youth in all of us. Love
shows him really coming in to his own, and is a great album because of it.
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