2. Perfect From Now On (1997)

The secret track on 1994’s There’s Nothing Wrong With Love is a mock preview of the next Built To Spill album with snippets from fake songs that show BTS branching out into new sounds like saccharine pop-punk and hokey country balladry before a cartoonish voice announces, “Look for the record with me on the cover!” It was a lark, but when Perfect From Now On emerged in early 1997, the change was almost as radical and far more exhilarating. Being an underground guitar band with ties to Seattle, Built To Spill had of course signed to Warner Bros. during the post-Nirvana alternative cash-grab, and that major label money was well spent. From the first floating notes of “Randy Described Eternity,” it’s clear Perfect From Now On marks a major sonic upgrade. It’s also a quantum leap in terms of ambition. Martsch had attempted epics before, but never such proggy epics. The Crazy Horse disciple was on his Floyd shit, tracing existential orbits to infinity without compromising the craftsmanship that guided his compact pop songs. These eight spectral sprawls are Built To Spill at their most cosmic; imagery and sounds alike evoke space, God, and forever. Yet the concerns remain distinctly earthbound — bullshitting about your dreams, seething at minor annoyances, depending on your mother to see something special in you. It’s such an odd opus, thrilling to behold but surprisingly oblique compared to the albums on either side of it. When you’re not mentally locked in, it sometimes seems to go on and on and on and on and on and on. But Perfect From Now On rewards mesmerized observation on the level of the slavish devotion that spawned it.