Built to Spill at City Hall, Nashville, TN September 24th, 2006

This is a testimony to the level of hipness of the staff of my local Vanderbilt Ben and Jerry's ice cream parlor.

So I walked in there one day several months back and was grooving to the tunes on the stereo. "What's this?" I asked. "Built to Spill's new album" was the response.

Neat.

Fast forward a month or so. I am a regular at this store, in all senses of that word, to the point that when I walk in, the staff just asks me how many scoops I want (because beyond that variable, the cone never changes). This leaves us time to talk about other, more important things. Like weekend plans.

What was up with folks on the staff one weekend a few weeks back was the Built to Spill show. So I piggybacked on their enthusiasm, bought a ticket, and went along.

I'm not sure who the first opening act was, but the middle act was Helvetia, and I am sad to say I wasn't impressed. The frontman seems to have some sort of hip indie-rock pedigree and all, but the performance and the music both failed to connect with me. The rest of the band gave the impression that they were very surprised to be on stage ("What am I doing here? Why are there lights? What's this? A bass guitar? What the Hell, people?")

I had intended to stay back in the crowd, but friends encouraged me to come to near the front row, and so I was in prime position for when Built to Spill took the stage.

I was not very familiar with the music, though I had gone to Napster and listened to enough to know I was interested. So when they actualy started, it was the best of all possible worlds: an enthusiastic crowd, music that was very listenable but that was new like an undiscovered country to me, and I was with people who sell me ice cream. I was pumped.

The band looks like a gaggle of math professors, and the lead singer looks two steps away from quitting the math department, moving to a cabin in the woods without running water, and starting to mail letterbombs. The surreal images projected while the band played did nothing to dispel this notion.

The music was energetic, complex, loud and very, very listenable. I was reminded a lot of Sunny Day Real Estate's last album in terms of vocals, and there are a lot of apt comparisons to Modest Mouse as well. What I liked especially is that the music goes on digressions in terms of tempo, time signature, and dynamics - but never loses its sense of melody. Melody, however, with a lot of clangy, crashing noise. I dug it.

The one downside was the overly-enthusiastic drunk frat boy who shouldered his way to the front and did the drunk white guy dance, running into me and the ice cream folks repeatedly. But this was minor.

On the whole, a wonderful use of my time. Recommended.