All hail the mighty Built to Spill, the world's most beloved purveyors of spaced-out cock rock. Too obscure to be famous and too famous to be obscure, Built to Spill are to connoisseurs of psychedelic mood music what an untapped case of Mad Dog 20/20 is to winos — a cache of treasures to be savored all night long.

"I can't get that sound you made out of my head." So goes the opening line of the opening song of Built to Spill's thoroughly genius Perfect From Now On — and if you're a fan, it's an apt statement. I was on hand to see them perform that album, the band’s 1997 major label debut, in its entirety at Terminal 5 in New York City last Thursday. And boy is my face melted.

With yesterday's alt-rock heroes Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets as openers, the bill was stacked with '90s-era comfort food. The entire evening could be seen as a testament to survival — the Meat Puppets survived drug addiction, gun shot wounds and prison to be here, Dinosaur Jr. survived retirement and Built to Spill have simply survived, by meeting and exceeding all expectations placed upon them by their zealous fans.

It takes a certain amount of moxy to name your album Perfect From Now On, but ever since then, they kind of have been. There have been no creative missteps since that album — they just get perfecter and perfecter. Their new stuff is da bomb. Their old stuff is the bomb. And they somehow always feel like a well kept secret — they bounce off the mainstream radar, only to resurface every couple of years, ready to rock.

Perfect probably isn't their best album, but let's break it down for a second. "Randy Described Eternity" is a dope song. "Out of Site"? A dope song. "Stop the Show"? Another dope song. They're all dope songs.

That's what takes BTS from pretty great to genius. They're masters of song-craft. Their lyrics are heavy, man (though an embarrassed Martsch will tell you they're toss-offs), dealing with space, time, life and love, but not in a contrived or convoluted way — in a straight up, Zen koan, melt-your-face way. Take a throwaway line like "Velvet Waltz" 's "You thought of everything but some things can't be thought." Trippy!

The Number One question at any Built to Spill show — would they play "Cortez the Killer" (and for how many minutes)? The answer was no. The other question was how perfectly could they play PFNO? Pretty damn perfect, it would so happen. No one who paid the un-exorbitant ticket price (some $32) went home unhappy. Or if they did, they're just sad, ornery motherfuckers.

What a treat to know the whole set before it's played, and to love it (to know what you're gonna get ahead of time and not have to suffer through obscure stuff you don't like or new stuff you don't care for.) One guy was so into it, he kept alternating between interpretive dancing to every word, and standing stock-still, stroking his beard.All I heard was bad things about Terminal 5's sound, but these songs sounded phenomenal — at times it sounded like BTS were cutting a record in your living room.

"Hard to believe that after all this time, that after all this I'm still me," Martsch sang during "Made Up Dreams." The show ended in an inspired, seemingly endless jam, wherein instruments were taken over by returning Meat Puppets, and ultimately peaking in a little musical orgasm. It was an ending befitting of a perfect evening.