Reviews
"...Most focused effort in its nine-year career....a luminously poetic expression of good old-fashioned crash-and-burn sonic beauty...", Ranked #6 in Cmj's "Top 30 Editorial Picks 1999in, "...Reclusive Idaho guitarist/songwriter finally gets it right....He also has a powerful emotional, instrumentally muscular and impressively varied fourth album...", "It’s full of amazingly catchy rock songs with fantastic guitar work and Doug Martsch’s nostalgic lyrics and elegiac, Neil Young-ian voice.", "...Idaho oddity Built to Spill make music with a weird naive excitement that recalls R.E.M. at their fresh-out-of-Athens finest..." - Rating: B, 4 Stars Out of 5-"...Their Return to Form....Not a Bad Choice for Grandaddy's Grandad.", "...Built To Spill songs are typically about the physics of colliding emotions, about dissension at home and in the head....Yet there is something very whole and intoxicating about the way Martsch sets unraveling relationships against fastidiously scripted riff fireworks...", "'Carry the Zero' is the album’s centerpiece and the enduring evidence of Martsch’s place in the indie-rock hall of fame. There are no less than three perfect guitar tones, to say nothing of the riffs themselves...", Included in Cmj's List of "Top 25 College Radio Albums of All Time"
