by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
Built to Spill may have left the major label leagues, but going independent doesn't mean going alone. Just ask Doug Martsch–the Boise alternative wavers’ famously self-effacing frontman will gush about the people other than himself who keep the project going thirty years on. In one interview, he said his favorite thing about the band’s new record When the Wind Forgets Your Name was Alex Graham’s psychedelic cover art. When we meet over Zoom, he gives all credit for the album to Isabela Georgetti, the Brazilian tour manager who, in 2018, introduced him to Lê Almeida and João Casaes of psych-jazz-rock band Oruã. “This record wouldn't exist without her putting us together,” he says. “People don't realize how much people like her make this shit happen.”
Almeida and Casaes’ wound up touring as Martsch’s backing band for a stint, ultimately laying down the rhythm tracks for When the Wind Forgets Your Name. COVID-19 interrupted the process, but they consulted from a distance on the record’s scrappier, lower-fi production, and you can hear their revitalizing influence all over it. When Martsch launches lead single “Gonna Lose” with an instant-classic fuzz riff, there’s a crunchy drum fill to match it. After “Elements”–a melancholy beach-walk of the soul–stretches out, in classic BTS fashion, to almost six minutes of wistful verses and guitar breaks, it fades into atmospheric ocean sounds recorded by Almeida.
After the release, between shows on Built to Spill’s US tour with Oruã and The French Tips, Martsch spoke to Post-Trash about signing to Sup Pop, describing his dreams, and the pros and cons of home recording.
Photo Credit: Isa Georgetti; Collage Credit: Lê Almeida
Taylor Ruckle: I love your [Zoom] background, by the way.
Doug Martsch: Oh yeah, that's my dog Randy.
Randy...
Not related to the song either. Someone else that didn't know about that song named him. [laughs]
Untethered Moon was the last original Built to Spill record, and it was the last record for Warner Bros. What did it feel like, having been on a major label and then going back to being independent?
It didn't feel like a step up or down to me; it just seemed like the obvious thing we would do. We had a nice run with Warner Bros., and I think that signing with Warner Bros. was also a little bit of a bet against myself. With a smaller independent label, I probably could have had a better royalty split and spent less money on the records, which meant more money at the end of the whole thing, 'cause that's all money that came out of my pocket, or the band's pocket.
I feel like at this stage in our career, there's no reason to not be on a smaller, independent label. I don't think Warner Bros. would be a good place for us anymore, and Sub Pop seems like the ideal–like, the greatest place we could possibly imagine ending up. So you know, I'm stoked about the whole situation. It's an institution that's been around the whole time that I've been an adult making music, in my backyard–a lot of connections to it and stuff. It's pretty incredible to be a part of it.
When you started out to make When the Wind Forgets Your Name, did you have any deals in mind, or were you just setting out to make the next record?
No, we were signed to Sub Pop. We signed quite a while ago and didn't really talk about it because we didn't have anything ready to go. Then when that Daniel Johnston record came out, we didn't really want to confuse people. I signed with Sub Pop in the spring of 2019, and I don't think we ever talked about it for a couple years. It wasn't announced.
You talked about the money that you had to make records when you were on Warner Bros. Practically speaking, what was it like putting a record together without that?
Well, part of the deal with Sub Pop is that there is no record fund from them. I'm responsible for paying for the recording, but we just did it inexpensively, and not just because of that. I did have some money saved up for a recording fund, but we ended up making it cheap because I ended up doing it with those Brazilians, and they do everything cheap. They just recorded the basic tracks on a computer at a rehearsal space, and then they flew home, and I just finished it all at home by myself, except a little bit of studio work. I went to a studio for maybe a week just to get another pair of ears on it for the final mixdowns, and then getting it mastered. That was it.
I read some things about you recording at home on a computer. How does that change the way you approach a song and write your parts?
There's a lot of–I guess it's stuff that I would do anyway, but I would do it with demos. This time I was doing it on the actual record, so a lot of making up parts, trying out different things, and then getting rid of them. All these songs have, like, a hundred tracks on them, and then 50 or 60 tracks disappear and you're left with--I mean, 30 or 40 tracks sounds like a lot, but sometimes it's just something coming in for a moment, or whatever. I was really aware when working on it that I didn't want it to sound like it was being worked on on a computer, you know? I didn't want there to be too much stuff or too many abrupt things coming in and out. But yeah, basically using that as a demo recording process at the same time while making the record.
It was fun. The only thing I didn't like was that I was alone. 'Cause it was during the pandemic, and I was working alone anyway. No engineer. And sometimes it was nice to not have an engineer, 'cause sometimes you feel like you're wasting someone else's time when you're just sitting there playing something over and over again, but there's a lot of times where something cool happens, and you wish there was someone there that would be like, "That's cool." Or someone to help you decide if something's cool or not, you know? It was all my own choices about what to use and what to leave behind. I definitely rely on engineers and other musicians for that stuff a lot. Like, "I don't know about this," and they're like, "Oh, no, it sounds great!" And I'm like, "Okay, we'll do it."
"Elements" is a song that starts with this beautiful chord progression, and I feel like as it goes on, you just–like you're talking about, pull things in, pull things out. Organs and guitars and things. What do you remember about the way that song came together?
That's a song that we recorded for Untethered Moon, and it just was a little too hard-sounding, so just softened it a little bit. I just wanted it to be something that was atmospheric. The organ solo just sorta happened. It was gonna be a guitar solo–it'd always been a guitar solo. I kinda just jammed out a little organ thing, and it sounded nice. I don't play keyboards at all, so it was pieced together a line at a time. Then during the organ solo, there's sounds that come in and out. I did just tons and tons of things, and then narrowed it down to those sounds and moved things around.
It all fades out in the end into those ocean sounds.
Yeah, and that's Lê. That was his idea, and he recorded 'em–he did the mix, and then I fine-tuned it to where I wanted it to be. There's a few things like that. The plan was to mix the record with Le and João, because I was a big fan of things they were recording and the way that they produced, and that was a big inspiration to me making the record, was that I was gonna work on it with them. Then they went home and we weren't able to get together, so I thought we could send it back and forth, maybe have some Zoom meetings and hash it out, but it was too complex.
I sent it over to them, they sent back some mixes that I didn't like. They were just tonally way different than what I thought the mixes should be. Really kind of bass-heavy, and the overdubs and guitars were kinda background-y in their production. I was like, "This isn't gonna work. I don't even know where to start to hash it out." So I decided to do it without them, and then somehow, at the exact same time–-I decided to take one of their mixes and make it the way that I mixed it. Like, take their ideas, but turn things up the way I like 'em. At the same time, they had done the same thing with the same song. They'd taken the song and just made it the way they liked it. That worked out great, so that's the process we ended up using.
I sent them my mix, and then they would go in and EQ the drums–they did a lot of stuff too, added some percussion, redid bass parts–and it ended up working out really well that we just sent it back and forth a couple times and made adjustments to each other's stuff. Then I mixed it with another person just to get another set of ears on it in Boise.
I wanted to ask you about the way this record ends, with "Comes a Day." That breakdown where there's different sources of audio coming and going–there's some speech samples in there and other things that I can't identify. What all went into that?
That was another idea of Lê's. He didn't do it, but he said, "I think at the end, it should be filtered," which is a big thing that I love about Lê's stuff. He does it a lot, where all of a sudden the music sounds like it's just dropping underwater, and it comes back out, or whatever. The producer I ended up mixing with, he was the one who did the actual mixing, and he and I hashed it out together. We decided when to do it and stuff–Le just said "Do something like that."
The voice stuff, that producer, Josh Lewis, he said it would sound cool if there was some talking, like–I don't know, he said some Stevie Wonder song that I didn't know. I was like, "Well, I don't really talk. I don't really have anything to say." [laughs] But I did happen to have some voice memos of me describing some dreams, so I found a few lines from that, and that's what the speaking is. It got filtered all weird and whatever–we wanted it to sort of be audible and sort of inaudible. That mix was just a lot of me and Josh messing around with it until we came up with something we thought was interesting.
You've played with a lot of different lineups over the years, the current lineup on this tour being Teresa Esguerra and Melanie Radford. What is it like bringing in fresh players on songs that you've done so many times with so many different people?
I thought it was a difficult task back a long time ago. So much work for them to learn it, and me to show it to them again, all the rehearsing and stuff. I don't really mind it anymore–I don't mind playing music all day long, playing the same songs over and over again. I enjoy it, and they're really good. They listened to the stuff, learned it all on their own, so we just show up and play it. You know, people can learn the songs from the records, plus there's a lot of YouTube live videos for them to fill in the gaps of little things they're not sure what's going on. Then we talk about it, and I give them a little bit of direction here and there, of certain things that should be done a certain way, and over time we kind of hash it out.
Right now, it's incredible. These two are just so great. They're so fun to play with, and they're just amazing players. Basically, they play, and I don't even think about them. I feel like however good I can be is how good we're gonna be because those two are just killer. There's no limit to how good the band can be–the only limitation is how good I play and sing.
Do you end up seeing the songs differently when you've heard other people play them?
Yeah, a little bit. There's some subtle things here and there that I think are essential to the songs, for whatever arbitrary reason, but everyone plays their instrument differently, and that's just the way it is. Even just these little subtle differences. I want people to have their voice in the thing too–I don't want them to just feel like they're having to copy someone else's whole thing, so it's a little bit of meeting in the middle.
Like, Mel plays with her fingers, and no one's ever played with their fingers in Built to Spill, and there's a lot of early Brett Nelson stuff where he's playing chords, but she just does it great. You know, I kinda tried to talk her into using a pick, and she said she'd give it a try, and then we just ended up going and doing shows, and it never really seemed to be an issue. It didn't seem like it mattered, which really surprised me. She just was able to play so well with her fingers, and really able to emulate pick sounds.
That's so cool, 'cause I think of the different techniques having such a different character.
Totally, and I don't know, it might be good if she played with a pick still, but it's just so incredible, I can't say anything about it. [laughs] She's great. The way the two play together is really cool too, just the way they interact as human beings on stage. It's really humbling to be up there with these really cool people.