Built To Spill Moves In For Kill

Aggressive New Disc Is Band's Biggest Yet

Built to Spill's latest disc, "You in Reverse," is jammed with the band's familiar mix of indie pop, reggae, old school, country and classic rock. (Warner Bros.)

Combine the quavery authority of "Rust Never Sleeps"-era Neil Young, the woolly post-punk guitar contortions of Dinosaur Jr. and the suspicious hairiness of the Black Crowes, and you might come up with something like Built to Spill. Singer/songwriter/unlikely-guitar-god Doug Martsch fronts the shambolic, vaguely prog-y, only occasionally good-natured Boise band. Built to Spill's latest disc, "You in Reverse," cements its reputation as a jam band for people who don't like jam bands. In other words, most people.

It was not always thus: The band's 1994 breakthrough release, "There's Nothing Wrong With Love," was a mixture of sprawling, psychedelic guitar rock and small-scale pop gems so terrific it threatened to turn Martsch into one of his generation's greatest lyricists. But over the next decade, having decided that lyrics are to Built to Spill albums what plot is to a Rob Schneider movie -- nice, but not essential -- Martsch gradually replaced most of the band's linear material (you know, songs with verses and choruses) with lengthy, feedback-happy jams in which lyrics exist mostly to fill the spaces between guitar flourishes.

After six years of sporadic activity, during which Martsch released a taut folk-blues solo album and a live disc with a 20-minute cover of Young's "Cortez the Killer," Built to Spill has reconvened for its best outing since 1999's triumph-of-the-fuzzy "Keep It Like a Secret."

Sharper and more aggressive, less reliant on feedback and overdubs, "You in Reverse" is a case study in how to make an album that's bigger than anything that's gone before it. Martsch's fondness for musical athleticism -- power chords and whip-saw guitar solos -- is so pronounced as to make some of the smaller, simpler tracks of the band's early years now seem unthinkable. Even relatively straightforward songs such as "The Wait," the deceptively gentle ballad that closes the disc, end in a hail of theremin-like effects. "Goin' Against Your Mind" is eight sublime minutes in search of a melody -- all flailing snare drums, dueling guitars and stoner agnosticism ("When I was a kid I saw a light/Floating high above the trees one night/Thought it was an alien/Turned out to be just God"). Like much of "Reverse," "Conventional Wisdom" is catchy despite itself, beginning as a pop song before devolving into the Longest. Jam. Ever.

"Reverse" is generally more emphatic about percussion and organ passages (thanks to Quasi's Sam Coomes) than Built to Spill records usually are, though it's otherwise the usual tangle of indie pop, reggae, old school, acoustic-based country (familiar to anyone who has ever heard Martsch's solo record) and classic rock (familiar to anyone who has ever heard "The Dark Side of the Moon").

"Reverse" has moments of surprising minimalism -- at least, what passes for minimalism from a band fond of deploying three guitars at once -- but it's tough not to be nostalgic for the days when Built to Spill realized that quiet, two-minute pop songs could contain multitudes, and that bigger and broader wasn't always better.

Built to Spill is scheduled to perform at the 9:30 club May 9 and 10.

DOWNLOAD THESE: "Goin' Against Your Mind," "The Wait."