The band was tight and clean in their presentment of the songs. Tempo changes hit on a dime. Doug Martsch hung from the mobile of his tunes with his hard and earnest head twitches. He sang regally, gently raking his voice into the music, and did all the songs justice. Martsch slathered an agile and warm pin pricked scrawl of language into his solos. Sometimes playing for orbit and sometimes swinging open an old beloved door that creaks the same every time.

Built to Spill fans have relationships with the songs. And the songs know the fans in return. The finer sections of the night for me were when the band came down in dynamics. The quieter, moments of stasis, where the music gathered itself to decide where it needed to go next. Built to Spill has the ability to do that, to let the song decide where it needs to go. And when they’re in these in betweens, drifting and playing, their sound floats and seeps off the stage.

At one point, someone in the crowd agitated the band (or just Brett) and they tried to make him move to the back. I couldn’t tell if he got kicked out or not. Brett said, “Dude, just be glad you aren’t at a Fugazi show.” Doug chimed in with a, “Mob rules.”

They ended the night with a near thirty-minute epi-jam. Drummer Scott Plouf produced mallets and cycled patterns around into soft mountains. “Conventional Wisdom”. A feedback exploration of builds and fades emerged that shrunk the crowd of the Showbox into the Proteus submarine. It was a spin on the plot of Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage. In this version, Kim Jung Il has gotten hold of a slew of nuclear bombs and has programmed them to launch all over the world. He then slips while taking a bath and goes into a coma. The shrunken Proteus, with the crowd at the Showbox for Built to Spill inside, is injected into Kim Jung Il’s body to save the world.

After an amniotical journey through Il’s body, the Proteus arrives at his brain to find him having a dream about explosions. Speakers are aimed onto his lobes and Built to Spill is played. “Conventional Wisdom”. Cue slathering Martsch solo. Inside his coma, Il likes the song and its slathering and his explosion dream turns into one where he’s on a luxury riverboat surrounded by geishas, lotus flowers, pillows, and sage. Sun is on his face and the river bank slides by slowly. He wakes, stops the bombs from launching, and becomes a pacifist for the rest of his life. The Proteus, with the crowd at the Showbox for Built to Spill inside, is safely jettisoned from his body inside a tear of Il’s joy, and is brought back to normal size.

Built to Spill saves the world.

Set list after the jump.

Three Years Ago Today
Stab
Hindsight
The Plan
When Not Being Stupid Is Not Enough
Reasons
Done
Joyride
Time Trap
Life's a Dream
Wherever You Go
Kicked It in the Sun

Encore:
The Weather
Alarmed
Conventional Wisdom