Built To Spill - Ultimate Alternative Wavers

The debut album begins oddly with draggy dirge "The First Song", which while possibly misplaced as the lead-off track, at least the lo-fi recording doesn't prevent the song from coming together. "Get A Life" is also a slow grind, but this one with Replacements guitar leads. "Three Years Ago Today" and the title song are closer to what I think of as the classic BTS sound, with guitars played clean but aggressively with shambolic Pavement structures. The indie-rock hit "Nowhere Nothin Fuckup" doesn't come until track 5. It's hooky but disjointed, with the structure sometimes being buried under random guitar noises. "Lie For A Lie" breaks the mid/slow tempo pace, and would be one of the better songs were it not for unnecessary guitar noise to prove how indie the record is. "Hazy" is also one of the other better tracks at the end, has a spacey, druggy delivery, but takes too long to get going and ends as a noisy mess. "Built Too Long", a wankfest in 3 parts, lives up to its name but would be better handled if those parts were refined into developed songs. As in the rest of the album, the noise obscures the complex, hooky arrangements and ultimately undermines the song, which should be the actual focus.

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