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Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr, and Built to Spill at the Orpheum, September 27, 2008

By RYAN STEWART | October 1, 2008

MONO MAN Martsch never changed his Strat.

The problem with these “play your most revered album in full” shows that everyone from Public Enemy to Liz Phair is doing lately is that the correct answer is not always a no-brainer. Take Built To Spill, who were in town on Saturday to play 1997’s Perfect from Now On in its entirety at the Orpheum. What about There’s Nothing Wrong with Love (1994)? Or even Keep It like a Secret (1999)? No offense, ever-trusty, mid-tempo PFNO, but why you?

MORE PHOTOS: Built to Spill at the Orpheum

It helped that BTS had legendary support. The Meat Puppets, opening things up, kept things efficient — Curt Kirkwood didn’t even so much as thank the audience until the end. They stuck mostly to country-tinged punk songs off II and Up on the Sun, among them a semi-coherent take on “Lake of Fire” in which Cris Kirkwood replaced the lyrics with nonsense melodic syllables — maybe they’re a little sick of that one.

A slightly chattier Dinosaur Jr. were next — turns out it was Lou Barlow’s first time playing the Orpheum. Their set drew as much from last year’s Beyond as from early classics Bug and You’re Living All Over Me. They even threw in three tracks from the period when Lou wasn’t in the band — a criminally underappreciated era. “Out There,” “The Wagon,” and “Feel The Pain” are all pretty great. But every time the set started to pick up momentum, a five-minute J Mascis guitar solo would kill it. They closed with their cover of “Just like Heaven”; its abrupt ending was a relief.

PFNO sounded great, and surprisingly fresh: the intensity of “I Would Hurt a Fly,” the beauty of “Kicked in the Sun,” the rousing rhythm and melody of “Untrustable.” Only “Velvet Waltz” seemed to drag, but that’s the case on the album, too. One problem: frontman Doug Martsch kept the same red Strat slung over his shoulder for the entire set, and that meant several awkward minutes of silence between songs as he tuned and retuned. PFNO has just eight songs, so BTS treated the room to some “bonus tracks” including “Car,” from There’s Nothing Wrong with Love, which scored the biggest crowd reaction of the entire night. Maybe they should have done TNWWL in its entirety instead? Just saying.

Related: Photos: Built To Spill at the Orpheum, Built to Spill, Off the record?, More

Photos: Built To Spill at the Orpheum
Built to Spill at the Orpheum Theatre, Boston, MA, September 27, 2008
Built to Spill
With the exception of certain hipper-than-thou types, the verdict on You in Reverse , Built To Spill’s first album in five years and their sixth overall, is unanimously — almost giddily — positive.
Off the record?
Pity the album. After a half-century of embarrassingly public body issues, our essential rock unit has not entered the new millennium looking very healthy. EPs are way more in vogue, MP3s have intangibility on their side, and 12-inches just sound impressive.
Taking care of business
Boston is one of the healthiest markets for live roots music in the country. Here are the 10 roots shows we don't want to miss this fall.
Beauty in the beast
"When J switched to guitar [from drums], he wanted to feel that same power. and the only way he could do that was to be, like, super loud. . . ."
Me, myself, and I
I have a theory that musical trios are as cursed as any non-musical threesome. Alliances of two against one and ego imbalances are inevitable. Dinosaur Jr. were able to reconcile, but here are three archetypical power trios who just couldn't keep it together.
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Tegan and Sara | Sainthood
Tegan and Sara have always been background music for staring wistfully out a coffeeshop window, in a strange city, alone, hung over and/or going on no sleep, wondering what the fuck went wrong.
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