Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#4 Daft Punk, DISCOVERY

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vs.

#29 Built to Spill, ANCIENT MELODIES OF THE FUTURE

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [[email protected]] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have two Designated Cheerleaders today, and both are for ANCIENT MELODIES OF THE FUTURE. First up, it’s @mrfasthorse.bsky.social. Take it away, Stephen!

This is the fifth studio album from this indie alt rock mainstay, living in the afterglow of seminal studio albums Perfect from Now On and Keep It Like a Secret. This album is a step back to the looser feel of BTS’s earlier work, but a step toward the keyboards and synths that makes AMOTF unique in the BTS catalogue. It’s a maturing sound, a recurring motif of many bands in this bracket that were trying to find a way to survive in transition from the grunge & alt-rock explosion of the 90’s into a sound befitting musicians approaching their (gulp) thirties.

BTS has long been an indie band shibboleth, name-checked by bands like Modest Mouse, and even by the likes of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, and covered once by Ben Folds Five (Twin Falls, a beautifully melancholy song in both original form and in the cover). Trimmed and Burning on AMOTF is more reminiscent of the band’s earlier indie sound - think a little more Steve Albini than Butch Vig. Now, in their old age, there’s a touch of country creeping into the song arrangements. On AMOTF, Happiness is a sloppy cowboy campfire romp, and Fly around My Pretty Little Miss is a fun poppy continuation of this country flavor. There’s long been a country twang buried in BTS, and frontman Doug Martsch toured solo with Modest Mouse just last year, as a country act playing slide guitar.

The synth on this record was a new divisive element for BTS, providing a sonic backdrop that would be difficult to achieve with guitars & pedals alone. The sad sagging synth in the verses of Alarmed are challenging at first, but they give way to a marching triumphal chorus and a cyclic guitar-fuzz bridge. To me the synths don’t feel out of place. It’s a piece of their evolving sound, an experiment reaching its peak here before scaling back in subsequent releases (I hesitate to compare the novelty to that blasted tremolo on REMs Monster, but alas).

Right as I started grad school, I made new friends that were really into Built to Spill, who handed me a copy of Perfect from Now On. I’ll confess it didn’t impress me at first, but I went along with them to a local BTS show anyway, trying to nurture these new friendships in an unfamiliar town. I remember it was on a brief tour of small venues leading up to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, where BTS were tuning up for a show where they were to play Perfect from start to finish. Reader, the way that this band clicked for me in the very first song that night (Randy Described Eternity) is something I wish everyone could experience, and years later I still can’t quite put my finger on exactly why it hit so hard. Martsch’s shy minimalist banter combined with his Muppet-like singing mannerisms and melodic extended solos were somehow the Rosetta Stone I needed to go back through their entire discography and really get it. Listening to AMOTF straight through for the first time in a while, I was surprised how many songs felt timeless and inevitable, like if Martsch didn’t write them someone else would.

As a perpetually touring indie act, I’ve seen BTS live maybe a dozen times now, with three different configurations backing Martsch, the only constant in the group. With his signature dirty pants and touring backpack carried right on stage, he’s now an ascetic monk worshiping small venues. I have tickets for another show this fall. I hope they play Strange.

Thank you, Stephen!

Last but certainly not least, we have Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social. Take it away, Brian!

This will be a shortie, but I just wanted to share that I really like this album, despite having one of the biggest bummer experiences seeing Built to Spill on the ANCIENT MELODIES OF THE FUTURE tour.

(The Original) BTS landed at Irving Plaza in NYC on Sept. 21, 2001, and, well, let's just say at that point you could still smell the smoke and other stuff up on 15th Street. But I think a lot of people really appreciated that bands were still showing up to play, despite how awkward it would be to throw out even the most bog-standard stage patter: "How's it going NEW YORK CITYYYYYY?!?" The shows I saw in Sept & Oct really helped.

BTS brought the big guitar-rock heat, and the setlist was filled with some of their best tunes. They opened with the Halo Benders' excellent "Virginia Reel Around the Fountain," delivered "Car" and "Twin Falls" and "Joyride" and even "Nowhere Nothin' Fuckup." Did they have a cover of "Dream Police" ready to go? They did! Thank you!

Then, at the end of the set, I swear to you on a stack of Trouser Press Record Guides that Doug and crew played "Free Bird." No one ironically yelled for it, they just played it. At length, with tons of extended guitar solos. And the lighting guy at Irving Plaza...he brought down the lights and shone a spotlight on the American Flag that was to the left of the stage. I am not making this up. I mean, come ON. This was NOT WHAT WE WERE HERE FOR. I guess some people maybe appreciated it, but to me it was such a fucking bummer. Can't we just rock out for a couple of hours? Is that too much to ask?

Anyway, AMOTF feels to me like the end of a kind of trilogy with PERFECT FROM NOW ON and KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET. The songs are tight and twisty and melodic and doused in that good BTS guitar stuff. I'd been listening to it all summer and enjoyed it. But it's now the BTS record I put on least often, just because it makes me remember "Free Bird" and that damn spotlight.

Thank you, Brian!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #9 Spoon, GIRLS CAN TELL defeated #24 The Coup, PARTY MUSIC, 120-81.

Thanks,

Kent