PERFECT FROM NOW ON

In the course of three days, I’ve seen Kevin Shields, J. Mascis, and Doug Martsch play guitar live, which to me, is an insane statement. Basically, they are my three favorite practitioners of guitar-heroism-by-other-means — dudes who, when I first heard them, gave me my first glimmering inkling of just how many sound worlds there were left to unearth in the electric guitar, an instrument I foolishly thought myself rather well-acquainted with at the time. I already babbled about MBV at length in a previous post, but I thought I’d share a few thoughts on last night’s show at Terminal 5. A reunited Meat Puppets and the recently reformed Dinosaur Jr. “opened” for Built to Spill, who was performing the entirety of Perfect From Now On, one of my favorite albums of all time. My expectations were guardedly high: I have seen revelatory and distracted/noncommittal Built to Spill in roughly equal measure, and the last one I had seen — in support of You In Reverse — was basically endless, closing out with a version of “Randy Described Eternity” (normally one of my favorite BTS songs) that hung onto the final A chord of the song for AT LEAST fifteen minutes — no variation, no soloing — while Doug cued up some home movies of cats. (No joke.) Alex, who was there with me, literally fell asleep on his feet. It was torture.

But first things first. Lamentably, we did not make it in time for the Meat Puppets, in accordance with the mysterious law of social circles dictating that whenever more than four people attend a concert together, everyone misses the opening band. Always. We did, however, walk in just as the first blast of feedback came from Dino Jr., and I am delighted to report that they sound as monolithic as I could have hoped. Time hasn’t seemed to touch any of the dudes in the band: Lou Barlow, his bangs in his eyes, still came off as goofy and gangly as a labrador puppy, and J Mascis is the same misanthropic Guitar Center hobbit he has been since day one, except now his long, greasy hair is white (wait, “Misanthropic Hobbits” — surely this is a lost Guided by Voices song?) “Little Furry Things,” “Feel the Pain,” and “The Wagon” were personal highlights, Lou singing ecstatically in unison with J on “Wagon” and J playing his most tightly contained and thrilling solo of the night on “Feel the Pain.” There was a dude in front of me wearing a backwards Suicidal Tendencies hat who could not stop making devil horns and knew every word to every song: behind him was a white-haired, impeccably dressed older gentleman leaning against a pillar and smiling quietly. This made me indescribably happy.

As for BTS, I am equally happy to report that, perhaps due to the constraints of performing an album start to finish, Doug couldn’t indulge his worst tendencies for abstracted bloviating, and as a result, they gave the best show I’ve seen from them in YEARS. The songs still stretched out gloriously — “Velvet Waltz,” in particular, went some ecstatic places in its ten-minute-plus running time. The cello, such an integral part of that album, sounded rich and resonant, and, after some distracted fiddling, Doug got his guitar gear in order and was as focused as I’ve heard him in awhile. The end of “Untrustrable” segued directly into “Goin Against Your Mind,” and, when he they came back out for an encore, Doug sang the first words of “Car.” In other words, it was more or less the Built to Spill show of my fever dreams.

Unfortunately, there was a patience-trying nowhere-jam to close out this show as well — this time, it was “Virginia Reel Around The Fountain,” a song Doug wrote for the Halo Benders, his goofy/primitivist side project with Calvin Johnson and then took back for his live sets. By the end, it seemed most of the audience was either filing out or texting.

In case you don’t have it, by the way, I highly, highly recommend The Normal Years, a collection of early Built to Spill that features several of my favorite songs of theirs: “Joyride” and “Terrible/Perfect” being just two examples.