Built To Spill

Show: Built To Spill at Slim's
Headliner: Built To Spill
Openers: Brett Netson
Location: Slim's in San Francisco, CA
Date: Wednesday, June 21, 2006
2006 Show #: 9

This is the 3rd time I've seen Built To Spill, and they've been a hit each time. Last night was the first of 4 shows they'll do at Slim's this week. All 4 sold out, but I was able to get my ticket for face value outside the venue from a guy who had an extra ticket.

To open the show, a friend of Brett Netson's read a narrative poem aloud. The guy was something of a modern day hippy/beatnik, and the poetry was correspondingly mediocre. Then Brett Netson came on and played a 40 minute set consisting of 4 songs. On the stage was him playing guitar and a girl playing xylophone. Each song was indeed about 10 minutes long. Good stuff, but not mind-blowing. I wasn't able to find anything about Netson individually on the web, but it looks like he's joined up with Built To Spill full time.

Built To Spill came on at 10:10 pm and played through to midnight with a short break for "encore." Netson seems to have joined up with the 4 normal Built To Spill guys making it a quintet. The show more or less had 3 pieces. About 1/3 of the show was old stuff. Another 1/3 was songs off the latest album ('You In Reverse') for which the were ostensibly touring in support of. The last 1/3 was new songs (4 in total) not off any recordings I'm aware of. Does this mean that another new album is in the works already? That'd be fantastic. I really dug the new songs, even the one with a bit of a reggae vibe.

New to the performance was a projection screen Built To Spill used. Throughout the show, they projected images for 10-20 seconds at a time. They mostly seemed to be in the style of the album art for 'You In Reverse.' It was odd, and didn't add a ton to the show, but didn't really detract from it either.

There were 3 other songs that don't really fit into the categories above. The first was a cover of a song by the Gladiators (so said Martsch) whose lyrics seemed to come largely from Kennedy's inauguration address ("Don't ask what your country can do for you..."). The second was Martsch and Company jamming to a video of a guy ranting about how eco-terrorist are better than normal terrorists since eco-terrorist only attack property and not people. It went well with the sticker Martsch had on his guitar of a crossed out W. The last was the song of the encore, a 15-minute jam version of 'Broken Chairs.' Good stuff.

Overall a fantastic show. I wish I could make it to another of the 4 shows this weekend, but it doesn't look like I have the time. I'm excited about the potential of new songs too.

The Set List (minus the encore):