Recorded during Built to Spill's 1999 U.S. tour, Live captures this inventive Boise, Idaho, trio in full creative bloom, mixing Spartan rock structures with marathons of searching guitar solos and exploratory jams. Some songs are given a new tone: "The Plan" has a more desperate edge than it did on last year's Keep It Like a Secret, with Doug Martsch's guitar and his distinctive voice raging, tremulously, in the upper registers. Other tracks inflate like feedback-filled balloons: "Randy Described Eternity" is a dense dirge spotlighting the tension between Martsch's caustic noodling and the weighty chord shifts of touring partners Brett Netson and Jim Roth. "Broken Chairs" and a cover of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" stretch out to twenty (mostly instrumental) minutes apiece. There is no stage chatter on this album, because there's no room for it between the long grooves.

“Youth Knows No Pain”

“Like on 'Youth Knows No Pain' — we are the ones that should demonstrate, because we can take it,” Likke Li said. “We can pierce ourselves, take Ecstasy, dance all night and still go to work at our McDonald's jobs.” Despite the hedonistic sentiment in the song, the Swedish singer also admitted in hindsight her youth had repercussions. “I remember when I was 18-19 and feeling that I know it all,” Li said. “I always feel that I know it all. But that song is about realizing you don’t, and reflecting, ‘Boy, if I only knew what would follow.’”