At a time when hip-hop artists rule the pop charts, music industry crybabies regularly lament the lack of "exciting" rock bands. Music bizzers say "exciting" when they really mean "lucrative," but anyone who's really on the lookout for an exhilarating rock group should cast their ears toward Caldwell, Idaho's Built to Spill. Led by songwriter/guitarist Doug Martsch, Built to Spill traffic in beautifully arranged rock songs bursting with melody, raw guitar textures and homespun quirks.

Keep It Like a Secret, the group's second album for Warner Bros., is onshelves now, but curiously, Martsch isn't exactly bursting with pride. "I feel alright about the new record," he says quietly from his Idaho home. "After we make a record, the songs feel totally numb to me. I haven't listened to it in a long time, but maybe a year from now I'll be able to." Humble to a fault, Martsch even deflects praise of his ample guitar skills. "There's nothin' there that's too fancy. I'm the weakest link in the band in terms of ability to play."

Maybe he's just giving props to his bandmates. Drummer Scott Plouf and bassist Brett Nelson played with Martsch on 1997's Perfect From Now On, rooting his slurried guitar intricacies to a tight rhythmic bedrock, but their muscular performances are no stronger than his own. Some musicians talk down their playing ability because they're more into songwriting and storytelling. Not so with Martsch. "Lyrics are the last thing to come along," he says. "I don't really know ... I wish someone else would write lyrics for me."

Tellingly, the phrase that crops up most often in our conversation is "I don't know." Coming from a lyricist who regularly churns out priceless observations such as "No one wants to hear/What you dreamt about/Unless you dreamt about them" (from "Made Up Dreams"), all this hesitation to speak is a little off-putting. But Martsch doesn't mean ill by his near silence. He just lets his music speak for him. Welcome, then, to the world of a reluctant guitar hero.

Your music can be complex. Is Built to Spill an art rock band?

No. We're makin' regular music. The thing that first inspired me to make music was SST punk rock. All the first alternative rock bands -- Dinosaur, Pixies, Camper Van Beethoven, Butthole Surfers and Sonic Youth. Those people weren't really musicians, but they were making really good music. That's what punk rock always meant to me. Anyone having good ideas was enough to make records, you didn't have to be a great musician. But Hendrix I love. He's just unstoppable. He's always good. Everything he does is brilliant.

Built to Spill has been through a lot of personnel changes, but the last two records have been you, Scott and Brett. Are you settled on the trio?

The idea in the first place was to play with different people and make different kinds of records. I don't have a specific idea of what Built to Spill is gonna be. Then I liked playing with those guys a bunch when we made [1997's Perfect from Now On], it was a pain in the ass to change the lineup again, and they were into being in the band. They're both really good players. They're both really great human beings. That was the drive behind every band, that I liked the people. That's way more important to me. My life is more than making music. And touring and making records is more than making music. If you're around people all the time, they have to be people that you love. You know, I don't like to be around people I don't love.

How many records would you like Keep It Like a Secret to sell?

Aw, I don't care at all. As long as it doesn't sell less than the record before [40,000 copies]. But if it does, I guess that doesn't matter to me too much either.

Who do you think your audience is?

Hopefully, nice people. Smart people. That's what I like to think at least.

Do you work obsessively to get different guitar sounds -- you use so many -- or do you just plug in and play?

I'm pretty straightforward. As time goes on I get a little bit more particular, but I'm not a techie at all. I know what things are supposed to sound like, but I have no idea how to get that sound.

In "Randy Described Eternity" [from Perfect From Now On] you sing "Every thousand years/This metal sphere/Ten times the size of Jupiter/Floats just a few marks past the Earth." What was that about?

That was an analogy that this Christian Youth group leader told me when I was in Junior High School. It was his analogy for eternity. His name was Randy. The basic idea was a metal ball that only comes around once in a while. Wearing it down by giving it one swipe with a feather, that's just a little tiny bit of eternity.

In "Carry the Zero" [from Keep It Like a Secret], you sing, "You're so occupied with what other persons are occupied with/and vice versa/You've become what you thought was dumb /A fraction of the sum." How about that one?

I don't know. I can't really remember. "Carry the Zero" is some kind of mathematic reference. So that line was in keeping with the theme. But I don't know that it really means anything.

Come on, that's a very strong line. You're castigating someone for caring too much what other people think of them, and you're singing from the heart.

Yeah, yeah. My lyrics have more to do with meter than meaning. Like I said, they're the last thing that come to the song. I have the melody and the meter written and I try to figure out what'll fit.

There's a moment where you whistle in harmony with a guitar in "Broken Chair." Where'd you get the idea for that?

I just did that while I was doing vocal tracks. It was actually a melody that another instrument was going to play and I just did it for the hell of it because it wasn't on there yet. I thought it sounded nice, I just wishit wasn't flat.

It's almost a defining touch for what Built to Spill is about. It's sweet and homemade and idiosyncratic but still plainspoken.

Yeah, that's what I hope to be doing. I love bands messing around with things and being ironic, but I don't want it to ever get in the way of the real song.

RODD MCLEOD
(February 19, 1999)