![]() ![]() "Center of the Universe," the second cut and first single, conjures up some XTC and a little bit of Barnacle Pete's finer sea shanties. "The Plan" is a brisk, weaving anthem complete with a solo that would make Thurston Moore green with envy. Doug Martsch just knows how to tickle me in all of the happy places, and he accomplishes that on the merits of the opening number alone. ![]() That's not a frequent occurrence- not unless it really, and truly is, love. Seriously, Keep It Like a Secret has already been spun at Club Jason five times within the past 24 hours. ![]() (My friends, I think when the next album's press kit arrives, I'm going to win my own petty game with that last sentence.) It also recalls last year's fine Halo Benders release, The Rebels Not In, the album Martsch recorded with Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson and former Spinanes and current Built to Spill drummer Scott Plouf. As avid readers of music publications will note as the reviews trickle in, Keep It Like a Secret will be heralded for retreating back to the pop songs of Love while keeping a foot inside Perfect's scrimmage line of dexterity and guitar heroism. Love was built on short, sharp, and snappy pop songs, but Perfect was- as everybody went on to note- "epic." Indeed, the 1996 release had few tunes under six minutes and wove dense guitars, emotional debris, and schizophrenic song structures into something gorgeous and fascinating. The one thread that held every single review and article together was how different Perfect was from the band's previous release, 1993's There's Nothing Wrong With Love. Showbiz's Grant Alden, who referred to Perfect as ".less ebullient than its predecessor, and has a wry durability about itself, yielding polished gems." and the usual hands- down winner, Will Hermes of the Village Voice, who actually managed to string together the words, "As far as rock goes, the stay- at- home types seem peculiarly American these days, a gesture from a post- grunge culture weary and dubious of being the biggest, loudest, and most important, just as current Britpop might be read, in part, as postcolonialist white British weary of apologizing for its history and looking to feel good about itself again" and call it a coherent sentence. But that's fine because I can sit there and mock my fellow writers by playing the "Sounds Like." drinking game or trying to find the biggest cliché of them all. Sure, I was just looking for my name somewhere in the clippings, and I suppose it would have helped to have previously written about them before. I put the disc in the player and began to leaf through the kit. I had to turn the kit upside down and start shaking until a white cardboard promotional CD case came a-tumbling out. Finally, a four page article from the new issue of Spin regarding the new release. (I'm sure he plays on the radiator all the time, or so the world of publicity shots would have me believe.) Then, twenty-eight pages consisting mostly of unanimous rave reviews for their last album, the fucking awesome Perfect From Now On. Secondly, an 8x10 publicity shot featuring Doug Martsch flanked by bandmates and sitting on a radiator playing a guitar. First, a three page letter from the publicist. The Built to Spill press kit, on the other hand, may be the next great American novel. ![]() Usually, a press kit is a dozen pages or less. To get you to do that, they also include various write-ups and reviews for a previous work or, in the case of a new band, loads of "Next Big Thing" accolades. You get a letter from some yahoo behind a desk who has this neat band they want you to check out. Press kits, for the uninitiated, are like a sales pitch. I hate talking about press kits, but I'm gonna drop the rule this time around. ![]()
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