Perfect From Now On

They finally made it - Built to Spill played their first-EVER Toronto shows last week, and it was worth the wait, almost. I say almost because really, would it have been that hard over the years to play the odd show here? If you're going to come to Buffalo, and if you're coming to Rochester, what's a little trip across the border? They have played Vancouver and Victoria, so I have always wondered what the issue was with Toronto. And none of the Toronto papers thought to cover last week's shows, so no one got to ask. I have rather hoped to run into Doug out front before the gig but missed him, otherwise I certainly would've.

Lee's Palace was the perfect venue - decent sound, great sight lines and a small enough space that even at the bar you had a decent view. H and I and the rest of our friends stood near the middle, right behind the sound guy, which also let us have a sneak peak at the set list. Doug didn't veer from the list at all, so the inevitable shouted requests went nowhere; but he was scheduled to play most of them anyway. He covered material from most of the albums - my own prejudice is that I would have preferred to have seen a bit more from Perfect From Now On, but that's just me - and he did most of the bigger ones.

Car was one of the few stripped down songs - Doug played it almost solo, with the drummer - but everything else was, well, big. Carry the Zero, Strange and my all-time favorite Velvet Waltz were each on their own well worth the price of admission. The thing with Doug Martsch is that he will find these great riffs and build on them and build on them, and he likes to find these series of ascending chord patterns that feel so incredibly perfect; so when you get a song that lasts for 8 minutes, well, that sounds just about right.

Someone has very helpfully posted the performance from that show of Velvet Waltz on YouTube. Oh, Internet, what will do you for me next?



Oh, and then he came out for an encore. He only played one song, Broken Chairs, but he played it for over 20 minutes. The only thing missing was the whistling at the end. Over all, I have to say that this show was better than the show we saw in Milwaukee a couple of years ago, mostly due to the sound. Eagles in Milwaukee had a pretty cavernous ceiling, which ate up a lot of the treble and detail. You also can still smoke in clubs in Milwaukee, and I never really noticed how much of a nuisance that was in a club until they stopped letting you do it - it made it more enjoyable certainly. (We bailed during the encore last time when H couldn't take the smoke anymore.) I haven't spoken to anyone who attended the Wednesday night show, but if you heard anything about it let me know. It was pretty much a full house, so I'm hoping that Wednesday was just as good as Tuesday.

And here's the original album version of what is one of my favorite songs ever (listen for the cello on the second verse, it kills me every time):

Built To Spill - Velvet Waltz



Get Perfect From Now On at amazon.com