IS Built to Spill the best indie rock band going? That’s always hard to say. But of the indie bands that broke in the 90s, this Boise collective that resembles a team of lumberjacks has put on the most consistently inspiring shows I’ve seen. With their two- and three-guitar attack, they manage to take interplay to places even Television didn’t dream. Their gig at the Echoplex not long ago was devastating, loud and precise at the same time.
HERE is my piece on the band from a few years back.
“I don’t really think of us as virtuosos,” singer-guitarist Doug Martsch, a mellow, pickup-basketball-and-Noam-Chomsky kind of guy, told me. “It’s more about a feel than putting out a bunch of notes; it’s about emotions coming out of the guitar.”
They’re at the El Rey Thursday night.