1. Keep It Like a Secret (1999)

Having established their bona fides as punchy pop songwriters on 1994’s There’s Nothing Wrong With Love and widescreen visionaries on 1997’s Perfect From Now On, Martsch and his mates sought to synthesize those strengths. It worked. Keep It Like a Secret is Built To Spill’s shining moment, when everything great about the group comes together in HD. The sheer quantity of “holy shit” moments on this record rapidly becomes overwhelming in that euphoric, can’t-stop-smiling sense. “The Plan” drops in like a plummeting elevator, blasts back through the ceiling, sprouts a parachute and glides gracefully to ground. “Center Of The Universe” rides a guitar part so giddy it’s almost goofy. Amidst the intensifying guitar waterfalls that propel “Carry The Zero,” Martsch’s arching whine piles on iconic lyrics till the levee breaks. (“You have become/ What you thought was dumb/ A fraction of the sum!”) The album could end there and easily go down as the grand finale of ’90s guitar rock, but its pleasures continue to unfurl. “Time Trap” is multi-segmented mid-tempo manna. “Temporarily Blind” is the most gorgeous music they ever recorded, “Broken Chairs” the most brutal. And “You Were Right” just might be the pinnacle of all things Built To Spill: subverting and worshipping classic rock in word and deed, riding righteous guitar riffs into the horizon, lungs lifting the weight of the world to the edge of the stratosphere.